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NOTES 



ON 



PASSAGES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



THE RELATION 



BETWEEN 



JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY, 



ILLUSTRATED IN 



NOTES 



PASSAGES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 



CONTAINING 



QUOTATIONS FROM, OR REFERENCES TO, THE OLD, 



By JOHN GORHAM PALFREY, D.D., LL.D. 



k* ih 



Non enim me cuiquam mancipavi ; nullius nomen fero ; multum magnorum viromm judicio 
credo, aliquid et meo vindico; nam illi quoque non inventa, sed queerenda, nobis reliquerunt; 

et invenissent forsitan necessarta, nisi et superfiua qusesissent. 

Seneca, Epist. xlv. 



BOSTON: 

CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY, 

111 Washington Street. 

185 4. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by 



John Gokham Palfrey, 

T_ ,i n f 



in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE! 

METCALP AND COMPANY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



TO THE FRIEND, 

TO WHOM HE IS INDEBTED FOR THE PUBLICATION 

OF THE LAST TWO VOLUMES 

OF HIS LECTURES ON THE OLD TESTAMENT, 

THE AUTHOR 



RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBES 



THIS WORK. 



PREFACE 



The following pages make a sequel to my " Lec- 
tures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities," a 
large portion of their contents being a requisite com- 
plement to the leading argument of that work. 

Independently of the inherent interest which be- 
longs to the Jewish Scriptures, demanding diligent 
care for their correct exposition, I have chiefly aimed, 
in the series of comments now brought to a close, to 
make a contribution to the Evidences of Christianity. 

From the earliest to the latest times, from the con- 
temporaries of the Apostles to Voltaire and Thomas 
Paine, the Old Testament has been used as an arsenal 
for assaults upon Christianity. The Jews, who were 
addressed by our Lord and his first ministers, said 
that he did not correspond to the idea which their 
Prophets, venerated by them as unerring guides, had 
presented of the Messiah. The Pagan writers, as 
Celsus, Porphyry, and the Emperor Julian, adopted 
the same reasoning; and it has been repeated in 
modern times by Anthony Collins, and other able 
men. Physical science, as it has advanced, has sup- 



Vlll PKEFACE. 

plied indisputable contradictions to the account of the 
Creation, and other related statements, in the Book of 
Genesis, — statements for whose correctness the advo- 
cates of Christianity had acknowledged that religion 
to be responsible. The writings of Jews later than 
the time of Moses, especially the historical books, are 
represented to contain accounts of persons and trans- 
actions, now contradictory and essentially incredible, 
now unworthy of God to approve or direct ; and such 
as are sufficient to refute the claims of Christianity, 
if they are to be taken as part and parcel of it. 

There is no doubt of the exceedingly offensive 
spirit and language in which these objections have 
been urged ; but it has never seemed to me, since I 
began to think upon the subject, that they have been 
effectually answered. I do not think that Jerome 
made a satisfactory reply to Porphyry, or Bishop 
Chandler to Collins, or Bishop Watson to Voltaire 
and Paine. I was a boy in college when our coun- 
tryman, Mr. George B. English, published his book, 
entitled, " The Grounds of Christianity examined by 
comparing the New Testament with the Old." In 
the strictures which it drew out, Mr. English was 
abundantly convicted of plagiarism; but I did not 
think then that his argument was disposed of, nor do 
I think so now. Other parts of the Evidences of 
Christianity may overpower any adverse inference from 
this class of considerations. But, allow the Jews and 
Pagans of the first Christian centuries, — allow the 
moderns, Bolingbroke, Collins, Morgan, and Voltaire, 



PREFACE. IX 

— their premises, and I find myself compelled to own, 
that, as to this topic, they have the best of the dis- 
pute. 

I deny their premises. If the expositions of the 
Old Testament, which I have set forth in this series 
of volumes, are correct, those opponents of Chris- 
tianity have no ground to stand upon. 

First, by a detailed examination of the Old Tes- 
tament books in my " Lectures on the Jewish Scrip- 
tures and Antiquities " ; and now, by an examination 
of passages in the New Testament which quote from, 
or refer to, the Old, with a view to show that the New 
Testament never puts upon the Old a sense different 
from what I had ascribed to it, — I have aimed to 
establish the following propositions, viz. : — 

1. That the Pentateuch (with the exception of some 
later interpolations) was written by Moses, the di- 
vinely authorized revealer of the Jewish religion. 

2. That the history, in the last four books of the 
Pentateuch, of the ministry of Moses, and of his pro- 
mulgation of the Jewish Law and miraculous ad- 
ministration of the Jewish people, contains nothing 
incredible, or dishonorable to God ; but that its con- 
tents are eminently of the opposite character. 

3. That, as author of the Book of Genesis, Moses 
nowhere lays claim to the character of an inspired 
historian ; that his object, in its composition, was to 
confirm the revelations and provisions of his Law, to 
which it is a preface ; that its last thirty-nine chap- 
ters contain family traditions, sometimes more, some- 



X PKEFACE. 

times less credible, — sometimes incredible, by reason 
of contradictions, and otherwise ; and that the earlier 
portion, evidently proceeding originally from diverse 
sources, and embracing irreconcilable statements, was 
collected and preserved by Moses, not because of 
its having any warrant of historical truth, but mainly 
because of its being evidence of a state of opinion, in 
times anterior to his own, accordant with doctrines 
and practices inculcated by his religion. 

4. That the revelation of Judaism, and all miracu- 
lous administration of the Jewish nation, terminated 
with the age of Moses. 

5. That the historical books after the time of Moses 
have no other authority than that of works of other 
historical writers of a rude age ; that their authors 
do not lay claim to supernatural inspiration, nor is 
that claim asserted for them by any authorized wit- 
ness ; that they are to be taken, like other such com- 
positions, as containing a basis and outline of truth, 
but with a large mixture of unfounded, self-contra- 
dictory, and incredible narrations ; and that, espe- 
cially, Christianity neither makes itself, nor is in any 
way rightfully made, responsible for the accuracy of 
their contents. 

6. That neither the Old Testament, nor the New, 
teaches, that, from the time of Moses to the time of 
Jesus, there was any man supernaturally informed 
of any future event whatever ; that the word prophet, 
in the Biblical use, did not denote a predicter of 
future events ; that the office of a prophet was not 



PREFACE. XI 

that of a foreteller ; that the anticipations expressed 
by the prophets often differed from events as they 
subsequently occurred ; that their conception of the 
coming Messiah was to a great extent incorrect, and, 
as far as it was correct, was founded on a declaration 
of Moses, connected with earlier revelations to the 
patriarchs ; and that there is no evidence of any ful- 
filment of an anticipation of theirs, of a nature to 
show the anticipation to have been supernaturally 
suggested to their minds. 

7. That the miscellaneous writings of the later 
Jews, including devotional and ethical compositions 
(like the Books of Psalms and Proverbs), while they 
are such as to bear testimony to the improving culture 
exerted through the Law, are not the productions of 
men miraculously endowed and commissioned ; that, 
interesting and profitable as any of them may be, they 
are destitute of any peculiar authority ; and that, in 
the composition of some, as the books of Jonah and 
Judith, nothing more was contemplated than a fic- 
titious narrative, with or without a moral. 

These, I repeat, are conclusions which I have un- 
dertaken to maintain, not upon any grounds of ab- 
stract reasoning, but upon an examination, in detail, 
of the Old Testament itself, and of those texts of the 
New Testament which bear upon the Old. Few, 
perhaps, will take up my books prepared to agree 
with me. But it may not be too much to ask of can- 
did persons who dissent, that they will consider what 
are the texts of Scripture on which their own dif- 
b 



Xll PKEFACE. 

ferent opinion rests, and then turn to the comments 
which I have made on those texts respectively. In- 
tentionally, I am sure, I have not omitted any passage 
pertaining to the question, or done injustice to the ar- 
gument which it may be thought by others to uphold. 
In respect to every passage which I have treated, I 
have honestly endeavored to ascertain the sense which 
the writer or speaker had in his mind, and intended 
to express. 

The quotations from the Old Testament in the New, 
have, of course, had a principal share of my attention. 
In many of these, it has been the opinion of Christian 
scholars, that Jesus and the Apostles and Evange- 
lists ascribed supernatural foreknowledge to the post- 
Mosaic writers of the Old Testament, and even repre- 
sented as supernatural predictions passages which do 
not seem naturally to bear that character in their orig- 
inal use and connection. From an early age of Chris- 
tianity to the present time, it has been the self-im- 
posed task of commentators to maintain that this 
supposed representation, by Evangelists and Apostles, 
of the sense of the Old Testament writers, was a cor- 
rect representation. In this argument, I am un- 
doubtingly of the opinion, that Collins and other in- 
fidels were right in saying that such commentators 
have failed. Christianity needs, in this particular, a 
different defence from what has been made. 

"William Whiston, the associate and the succes- 
sor of Sir Isaac Newton as Mathematical Profes- 



PREFACE. Xlll 

sor at Cambridge, made a deplorably lame reply to 
Collins, in his treatises, entitled, " The Literal Accom- 
plishment of the Scripture Prophecies," and " A Sup- 
plement to the Literal Accomplishment of the Scrip- 
ture Prophecies." He assented to both the postulates 
of his opponent ; namely, first, that the New Testa- 
ment writers had applied the Old Testament passages 
in question to the proof of Christianity ; and, sec- 
ondly, that, in point of fact, those passages, as they 
now stand, are inapplicable to that use. But he as- 
sumed the utterly indefensible position, that the Old 
Testament had, in those passages, been corrupted by 
the Jews since the Apostles' time, for the very pur- 
pose of invalidating their argument ; that, as those 
passages originally stood in the Hebrew Bible, and 
as they stood at the period when the Apostles quoted 
them, they were exact descriptions of Jesus, his re- 
ligion, and his times, and received in him and his 
Gospel their literal fulfilment ; and that it was only 
by the perfidious tampering of unbelievers with the 
records, in the second century, that this correspond- 
ence had been made to vanish. I do not know that 
Whiston's reasoning ever satisfied any wise man, ex- 
cept himself* 

My very able and learned predecessor and successor 
in the chair of Biblical Literature at our University 
have presented a different view of the subject. Ac- 
ceding to the prevailing opinion, that, when an Evan- 

* See my " Lowell Lectures," Vol. II. pp. 215, 216. 



XIV PREFACE. 

gelist or Apostle made a quotation from the Old Tes- 
tament with such a form of introduction as " All this 
was done that it might be fulfilled," &c, he often meant 
to represent the original writer as having uttered a 
prediction now accomplished, they hold that the Evan- 
gelist or Apostle was in error in his interpretation of 
the language quoted by him. They urge that the 
commission of the Apostles and Evangelists to preach 
Christianity does not imply their being divinely se- 
cured against mistakes on all related subjects ; and 
that they might be perfectly well qualified to convey 
to us the miraculous evidence of the doctrine of Je- 
sus, without being disabused of the false theories in 
which they had been educated, and made competent 
expositors of the Jewish Scriptures. 

An hypothesis which has such advocates is not to 
be lightly dismissed.* I have given it the best con- 

* Mr. Norton has lately passed away from the circle of friends who re- 
vered and loved him with a singular devotion. 

" My thread of life has even run with his 
For many a lustre." 

The first time that, then a child, I heard his name, I was with Mr. Buck- 
minster, who stopped to accost him. What a conjunction ! Since that day, 
the thought of one has been scarcely separated from that of the other in 
my mind. From the moment of my entering on professional studies, I 
was honored with Mr. Norton's friendship, and, through the many happy 
years which followed, it made one of the chief joys of my life. I always 
lived near him afterwards, and eventually, for almost the whole of the last 
quarter of a century, our homes were side by side. No one who had such 
opportunities as mine to know the rare extent and thoroughness of his learn- 
in o - , his religious love of truth, and the punctilious accuracy of his habits 
of study and of reasoning, could dissent from him without great self-distrust. 
If there was any man I have known to whom I could feel safe in implicitly 
submitting my own judgment, it would be he. I differed from him widely 
on some points of Scriptural criticism, as, the external history of the Pen- 



PEEFACE. XV 

sideration of which I am capable, and cannot find 
reason to accept it. It appears to me, that, if there 
was any subject on which the disciples of Jesus — 
Matthew, John, and Peter, his personal companions 
and Apostles, — Mark and Luke, intimate and con- 
fidential friends of Apostles, — Paul, fully instructed 
by Jesus himself in the long seclusion which followed 
his conversion (Gal. i. 11-19) — may be presumed 
to have been correctly informed, it was that of the 
evidences of the religion which they were to publish 
to the world. It is even particularly recorded, that 
their Lord, in an appearance to two disciples after 
his resurrection, " beginning at Moses and all the 
prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures 

tateuch, and the use made of the Old Testament by the writers of the New ; 
but it was with such diffidence as only the most careful and often-repeated 
revisal of my views would have enabled me to overcome. I know of no 
theological scholar, who has brought the resources and charms of so various 
and elegant accomplishments in general learning to be subsidiary to such a 
rich fund of Scriptural knowledge. His great work on the " Genuineness 
of the Gospels" — a magnificent monument of erudition, logic, and taste — 
exhausts the argument, supersedes all that before had been written upon it 
in modern times, and establishes on an immovable basis that cardinal fact 
in the Evidences of Christianity. His Translation of the Gospels, with 
Notes, announced as being now in the printers' hands, is awaited with ear- 
nest expectation, as a work which may prove not inferior in importance to 
any that has seen the light since the time of the Reformers. It is greatly 
to be hoped that it may be followed by such translations and expositions of 
portions of the Epistles, as he is understood to have left in a state of prep- 
aration for the press. 

The void which has been left by the death of this illustrious Christian 
scholar will not be filled in our age. Surrounded by every thing that could 
make life desirable, enriching it day by day with dignified employment and 
benignant kindness, enjoying it for himself and using it for others to the 
last, he resigned it in sacred peace. 

" Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit ; 
Nulli flebilior quam mihi." 



XVI PREFACE. 

the things concerning himself" (Luke xxiv. 27). 
But what is decisive with me is, that, on a careful 
review of references to the Jewish Scriptures by 
Evangelists and Apostles, I cannot find an instance 
of what appears to me misinterpretation on their part. 
I am not called upon to reconcile their authority as 
Christian teachers with their misconceptions of the 
Old Testament, because I do not see that they ever 
misconceived it. I am persuaded that expositions of 
that collection of writings, some current in the time 
of our Saviour, and others, more numerous, in our 
day, are founded in error; but I am also persuaded 
that it is error in which the Apostles and Evangelists 
did not share. 

The reception of my theory of the Book of Gene- 
sis, expounded in the " Academical Lectures on the 
Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities " (Vol. II. pp. 1 - 
122), has afforded me great satisfaction. Though well 
satisfied of its truth, I considered it a novelty, as 
little likely to find favor as any thing which I had 
proposed. If substantiated, it puts an end to a world 
of cavil. A friendly critic in the " Christian Exam- 
iner" (Vol. LIII. p. 7), while he dissents from other 
views maintained by me, pronounces this to be " pre- 
eminently satisfactory," as well as " original," and to 
"invest the book with a greater interest and higher 
value than can be assigned to it on any other hy- 
pothesis " ; and I have been much gratified to ob- 
serve a tacit adoption of this feature of my scheme in 
other authoritative quarters. 



PEEFACE. XV11 

My argument in the present work (pp. 5-16), that 
the descent of our Lord from King David was no 
peculiarity, but a fact equally predicable of the gen- 
erality of his Jewish contemporaries, will strike read- 
ers at first with surprise. But it is only a different 
application of what Jews and Christians unanimously 
recognize in another case. The time between David 
and Jesus was somewhat more than a thousand years. 
The time between Jacob and David was a century less. 
(See " Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 130, 131.) But 
everybody understands the millions of Jews in Da- 
vid's time to have been all descended from Jacob. 

I desire it may be remembered that my reasoning 
(pp. 233 - 237) from the construction of the Hebrew 
word corresponding to the word " justify " in the New 
Testament, is an independent passage, and may be 
thrown out without invalidating the rest of the argu- 
ment. It seems, however, that, with equal fidelity to 
the Hebrew original, the Greek translators might have 
used some word corresponding to rectify, instead of 
"justify"; and that, had they done so, while the tech- 
nical character of the expression would have been 
made manifest, an entirely different direction would 
have been given to theological speculation. 

When, for brevity's sake, I have used the expres- 
sion, "the pseudo-Isaiah" (e. g. p. 172), I must not 
be understood as implying that the author of the 
writings erroneously imputed to Isaiah (xl. - lxvi.) 



XV111 PKEFACE. 

designed to pass them off as productions of that 
prophet. The contrary is apparent. It was a sub- 
sequent compiler who arranged with the works of 
Isaiah those compositions from a later hand. (" Lec- 
tures," &c., Vol. III. pp. 180, 181.) 

I have a few times referred, in the following pages, 
to my " Lowell Lectures on the Evidences of Chris- 
tianity." But the frequent references to " Lectures, 
§*c." are always intended to indicate a different work ; 
namely, the " Academical Lectures on the Jewish 
Scriptures and Antiquities." 

The texts commented upon are printed so as to 
represent the readings of Griesbach's Critical Edition, 
being copied from my edition, in 1830, of the " New 
Testament in the Common Version, conformed to 
Griesbach's Standard Greek Text." 

If, in many instances, I have seemed but to encum- 
ber the page, by reprinting, with a simple reference 
to another place, some text which, with or without 
some verbal difference, had occurred and been dis- 
cussed in a previous part of the book, I have con- 
sidered this method to be necessary for the reader's 
convenience, who might have his attention turned to 
the same sentence, as it was presented in one or 
another portion of the New Testament. He might, 
for instance, look for a comment on Mark i. 11 in its 
place, and he should either find it there, or else be 



PREFACE. XIX 

referred for it, as he is (p. 129), to the remarks on 
the corresponding passage in Matthew iii. 17. 

Some of the views and arguments which I present 
are original with me, and the illustrations the fruits 
of my own reading in the authors quoted. Others 
are drawn from the common stock of earlier criticisms, 
of which the later commentator freely avails himself, 
with more or less change, or without change, in the 
application. For others yet, I am specially indebted 
to this or that writer. And there remains a por- 
tion, of which I am now entirely unable to trace the 
source, so as to refer them to one or another of the 
classes above defined. I have framed most of these 
notes out of memoranda accumulated through a course 
of years, during which I was lecturing on the New 
Testament, and was used to set down all that occurred 
as suited to my purpose, generally without noting 
the source whence it was derived, whether from other 
commentaries, or from my independent reflections and 
investigations. Under these circumstances, it would 
not be possible for me with any completeness to indi- 
cate respectively the origin of the remarks which I 
have brought together ; and I have thought it best 
wholly to decline an attempt so impracticable for my- 
self, and so fruitless for the reader. I am little con- 
cerned, whether more or less of what I propose shall 
be found novel. Enough for me, should it prove 
true and useful. 

"How well I have succeeded in my design, the 



XX PREFACE. 

reader is now to judge. Perhaps it may be thought 
that I have mistaken the meaning of some passages 
of Scripture. All that I can say for myself is this 
only ; — that in the explication of so many, it is well 
if I have not ; that I have sincerely endeavored to 
follow truth, being very little solicitous where it led 
me ; that, if I have failed, yet this I am sure of, that 
my intentions were good and upright. But if I have 
made it appear, that the writers of the New Testament 
argue strictly and very rationally, even in those points 
where our adversaries represent them as arguing very 
weakly and absurdly, I hope I have done no disservice 
to the cause of Christ." (Preface to Sykes's " Essay 
on the Truth of the Christian Religion.") 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 4th, 1854. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Gospel of Matthew 1 

Gospel of Mark 128 

Gospel of Luke 136 

Gospel of John 166 

Acts of the Apostles 187 

Epistle to the Romans . 225 

First Epistle to the Corinthians 266 

Second Epistle to the Corinthians 279 

Epistle to the Galatians . 282 

Epistle to the Ephesians ....... 290 

*Epistle to the Philippians. 

Epistle to the Colossians 294 

*First Epistle to the Thessalonians. 

Second Epistle to the Thessalonians ..... 294 

First Epistle to Timothy 295 

Second Epistle to Timothy . 296 

Epistle to Titus ......... 302 

*Epistle to Philemon. 

Epistle to the Hebrews 311 

Epistle of James 331 

First Epistle of Peter . 303 

Second Epistle of Peter ........ 334 

First Epistle of John 310 

*Second Epistle of John. 
*Third Epistle of John. 

Epistle of Jude . 339 

Revelation of St. John the Divine 343 



* These books contain no such reference to the Old Testament as to 
bring them within the plan of the present work. 



NOTES 



ON 



PASSAGES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 



PART I. 
NARRATIVE BOOKS. 

SECTION I. 

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 

I. 1.* 

Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 

These titles, applied to Jesus, the founder of our 
religion, refer to the Old Testament, and must be ex- 
plained from it. 

1. Jesus is surnamed Christ. The Greek word 
Christ (xP L(7T °s) an d the Hebrew word Messiah 
(IV?>D) are equivalent. (John i. 41.) They both 
mean anointed. Part of the ceremony of inducting 
the Jewish kings into their office consisted in pouring 
a perfumed oil upon their heads. (Judges ix. 8 ; 1 Sam. 

* I shall not treat the question respecting the genuineness of the first 
two chapters of Matthew's Gospel. The external evidence against them 
consists in a statement of Epiphanius (A. D. circ. 360) that they were 
wanting from the copies in the hands of the Ebionites (" Sanct. Epiph, 
Opp.," "Adv. Hser.," cap. xxx.§ 13, Tom. I. p. 138, edit. Petav.), a statement 
thought to derive confirmation from a notice by Eusebius (" Hist. Eccles.," 
Lib. iii. cap. 27), as well as by earlier fathers, of the disbelief of some of 
the Jewish Christians in the doctrine of the miraculous conception. The 
internal evidence, which resolves itself mainly into the question of a recon- 
ciliation of the passage with the introduction to Luke's Gospel, is dis- 
cussed by Mr. Norton (" Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels," Vol. 
I., Additional Notes, pp. liii.-lxii.) with his characteristic eminent ability. 

1 



2 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 1. 

ix. 16; x. 1; xvi. 13; 2 Sam. ii. 4; v. 3; xix. 10; 
1 Kings i. 39; Ps. ii. 2; xx. 6.) 

Now the " prophet " who had been predicted by 
the founder of the Jewish institutions, and described 
by Moses as "like unto himself" (Deut. xviii. 15- 
18), had, in the course of time, come to be conceived 
of by the nation under the different character of a 
king. (Comp. John i. 41, 45, 49.) How this concep- 
tion grew up, I have explained at large in another 
work, to which I refer, instead of here going again 
over the same ground. (" Lectures on the Jewish Scrip- 
tures and Antiquities," Vol. II. pp. 377-386; III. 
18 - 21 ; IV. 306, 307.) From the age of David down, 
the advent of that illustrious personage, of David's 
blood, who was to exalt his country to a vast domin- 
ion, and make Jerusalem, his capital, the admiration 
and delight of the whole earth, was the darling hope 
of every Jew. In their times of prosperity, they had 
looked for the speedy fulfilment of that hope. In 
their depression and distress, it had been their re- 
source against despair. It was not only, as some 
writers seem to suppose, at the era of the first Csesars, 
that they were expecting their royal hero. They were 
looking for him in every period from that of the 
foundation of their monarchy, and especially in every 
period when the aspect of public affairs seemed so 
doleful that no help, short of his, would avail. 

As this person, according to their erroneous concep- 
tion, was to be a king in the common acceptation of 
that word, a fit name for him was the anointed (comp. 
e. g. 2 Sam. ii. 7 ; iii. 39), the Christ, the Messiah. 
This particular name, it is true, does not appear to 
have been ever applied to him by any Old Testament 
writer, unless we understand him to be designated by 
the word in a Psalm probably written by David. (Ps. 



I. 1.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 3 

ii. 2; comp. "Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures," &c., 
Vol. IV. p. 317.) But no fact is more familiar to a 
reader of the New Testament, than that, in the time 
of Jesus, the word was in constant use among the 
Jews in the application which I have described. 

Erroneous as was the apprehension entertained by 
the Jews concerning the illustrious personage who, in 
God's good time, was to appear among them, it was, 
however, founded upon a basis of truth. It had had 
its origin in the revelation, which, fifteen centuries 
before, Moses had been inspired to utter, that God 
would send to them " a prophet," or teacher, to be, 
like Moses, the publisher of new truth, and the found- 
er of new institutions. In the ages after Moses, the 
genuine idea expressed in his words had, through 
natural tendencies of the human mind, been obscured, 
and its prime element had been made secondary. It 
was still believed that God's new messenger would be 
a " prophet," that is, a teacher. But it was believed 
that he would execute this office, that he would extend 
the truth, chiefly by his victorious arms ; and the 
attributes of the religious reformer were subordinated 
in the popular thought to those of the powerful and 
magnificent sovereign. 

Jesus was the personage whom Moses had predicted. 
The Jews of the time of Jesus were looking for the 
personage predicted by Moses, though, like their an- 
cestors from a time at least as far back as that of Da- 
vid, they so greatly misconceived his character. It 
was the personage foretold by Moses, ill as they un- 
derstood him, that they had in view when they spoke 
of the Messiah, or Christ Jesus, therefore, when the 
time came for him to assert his claims distinctly (Matt. 
xvi. 13-17), rightly claimed to be the person denoted 
by that title. (" Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 382 - 384.) 



4 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 2-6. 

Matthew, in the verse before us, omitting the defi- 
nite article, uses the word Christ like a proper name. 
He does not say " Jesus the Christ," but " Jesus Christ." 
The explanation of this is, that, after Jesus had come 
to be fully recognized by his disciples as the Messiah 
who had been expected, his proper name and his 
official name became to them equivalent. During his 
stay on earth, the word Christ does not appear ever to 
have been applied to him except in the sense of the 
official designation. After his ascension, it almost, in 
the use of his disciples, superseded that of Jesus as 
his proper appellative, an effect to which, as Dr. 
Campbell well remarks, the commonness of the name 
Jesus among the Jews may have contributed. (" The 
Four Gospels Translated," &c, Vol. -I. p. 225.) 

I. 2-6. 

Abraham begat Isaac and Jesse begat David the king. 

From Judah, great-grandson of Abraham, to King 
David, the genealogy recorded by Matthew is, with 
slight differences in the forms of some names, the 
same as that in two passages of the Old Testament, 
which were probably his authority for it. (Ruth iv. 
18-22, and 1 Chron. ii. 4-12.) The tracing of the 
parentage of Jesus through Jacob and Isaac up to 
Abraham, connects him with the promises to those 
patriarchs recorded in the book of Genesis (xxii. 18; 
xxvi. 4; xxviii. 14). 

I. 6-12. 

David the king begat Solomon and Salathiel begat Zo- 

robabel. 

This is nearly the same genealogy as that in the First 
Book of Chronicles (iii. 10-19). Three names and de- 



I. 13-16.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 5 

scents, however, contained in that list as belonging to 
the time between Solomon and the Captivity, are here 
omitted; namely, the names of Joash, Amaziah, and 
Azariah. (Comp. 1 Chron. iii. 11, 12.) As the reigns 
of these three kings had been treated at length in the 
historical books, they cannot be supposed to have been 
unknown to the compiler of Matthew's genealogy, and 
the omission must be explained as a device to favor 
the Jewish conceit by which the time between Abra- 
ham and Jesus is distributed into equal periods, con- 
sisting of twice seven generations each. (Comp. Matt, 
i. 17.) In the same way it seems that we are to ex- 
plain the omission of the names of Jehoiakim and 
Pedaiah. (With Matt. i. 11, 12, comp. 1 Chron. iii. 15 
-19.) And it appears to have been as a further ac- 
commodation to this plan, and an additional aid to 
the memory, that David and Josiah are both counted 
twice ; that is, each, once at the beginning, and once 
at the end, of a series of fourteen names. 

I. 13-16. 

Zorobabel begat Abiud and "Jacob begat Joseph the hus- 
band of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called 
Christ. 

The Old Testament nowhere traces the royal line of 
David further down than Zerubbabel, except in a dis- 
jointed and unintelligible list of names in the First 
Book of Chronicles (1 Chron. iii. 19-24), in which 
the name of Abiucl (son of Zerubbabel, according to 
Matt. i. 13) does not occur, nor that of any one of 
Abiud's descendants. From what source Matthew 
obtained his information, whether from public or fam- 
ily registers, he has not told us, and we have no means 
of ascertaining. 

Whatever may be one's views of Matthew's inspira- 
1* 



6 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 13-16. 

tion, it is entirely foreign from the purpose to say that 
Matthew had this list of names by supernatural illu- 
mination. The person who affirms this (unless he can 
show that Luke did not intend to give the genealogy 
of the putative father of Jesus) will have to maintain 
that another Evangelist (comp. Luke iii. 23-31) was 
at the same time made acquainted, in the same super- 
natural way, with an account of the parentage of Jo- 
seph, very different from that revealed to Matthew. 

But I do not now dwell upon this. What I have 
to say is, that inspiration is in the present instance out 
of the question. However material in other cases, it 
cannot possibly be in this case an element in the ar- 
gument, for the reason that the kind of proof here 
undertaken by Matthew is one to which, of its proper 
nature, supernatural illumination does not correspond, 
and to which it can afford no help. For some reason, 
Matthew undertook to represent to his readers that 
Joseph, husband of Mary the mother of Jesus, was 
descended from David. In the nature of things there 
was only one satisfactory way to do this ; namely, by 
appealing to the documentary, or (wanting this) the 
oral, traditionary evidence which went to show that 
such was the fact. Had there been ancient records 
containing an opposite representation, it would have 
been in vain that Matthew would have contradicted 
them on the ground of alleged supernatural illumina- 
tion. What he said by such illumination would of 
course have been true, but how could he have shown 
it to be so ? If there had been no records relating to 
the question, it would have been a question which 
there would have been no occasion for him to touch, 
and which, in their absence, he could not have treated 
to any advantage. It would be preposterous to repre- 
sent the Evangelist as proposing to bring the claims of 



I. 13-16.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 7 

Jesus to the test of a correspondence of his actual 
descent with a genealogical list which to him (Mat- 
thew) was only known by inspiration, and so could 
only be known to his readers on his authority. If 
there were records existing which represented Joseph 
as descended from David, then, and then only, was 
there something pertinent for Matthew to say upon 
the subject. But, on that supposition, it is plain that 
his apostolical authority was in no sort responsible for 
the correctness of the list. He took it as he found it 
in the hands of his countrymen, and merely called 
their attention to it. The very nature of the argu- 
ment precluded him from presenting on his own re- 
sponsibility the facts with which he invited his coun- 
trymen to compare the circumstances of his Master's 
appearance. If they were not already in possession of 
the facts from sources other than his statement, there 
could be no place for the argument which he holds. 

In my " Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures," &c„ I 
have reasoned at large that the ancient Jews had no 
divine authority whatever for the opinion, which, from 
the time of David, prevailed among them, that the 
" Prophet " predicted by Moses, the personage ideal- 
ized by them as the " Messiah," was to be the de- 
scendant, representative, successor, and heir of David. 
But, it will be asked, if the ancient Jewish writers 
(the Psalmists, and Prophets) were not supernaturally 
apprised of the fact that the Christ was to be the son, 
the descendant, of David, how came it to pass that 
Jesus, the Christ, actually was David's descendant? 
Does not the fact that the Christ, when he came, ac- 
tually turned out to be one of David's lineage, prove 
that those who, centuries before, had described him as 
of David's lineage, were divinely inspired ? 

I reply,— 



8 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 13-16. 

1. How do we know that Jesus was of David's lin- 
eage % Do we know it from Matthew 1 Matthew says 
nothing of the sort. He says that Joseph, the hus- 
band of Jesus's mother, was descended from David. 
But he says positively and circumstantially (if the first 
two chapters of his Gospel are genuine) that Jesus 
was not Joseph's son ; that he had no human father ; 
that, in short, he had no relation whatever to the line 
traced up from Joseph to David. 

2. But now let us suppose that Jesus was in some 
sense the son of Joseph, though Matthew (i. 16, 18 - 
25) appears very distinctly to deny to him that parent- 
age ; and that Joseph was shown by the genealogical 
registers to be one of the posterity of David. Or rather, 
independently of the genealogy of Matthew, let us as- 
sume, what I think the Apostles understood to be the 
fact (Acts xiii. 23 ; Rom. i. 3 ; 2 Tim. ii. 8), that Jesus 
was a descendant from David (that is, through Mary, 
his only earthly parent). How far will any consider- 
ate person maintain that this goes towards proving the 
supernatural knowledge of those ancient writers who 
looked for a descendant of David in the Messiah % 
Was there any thing peculiar in being a descendant of 
David 1 Were there so few descendants of David in 
Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus, that, when 
Jesus appeared to combine the two characters of the 
Christ and a son of David, the writers who had identi- 
fied the Christ with one of David's blood must be held 
to have been divinely inspired % 

On the contrary, it is probable that at the time of 
the birth of Jesus there were in his country extremely 
few native Jews who were not of David's blood, though 
whether they would be able to prove that descent 
would depend on the condition of the ancient records. 
If the Messiah was to be a Palestine Jew, it could 






I. 13-16.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 9 

scarcely be that the second king of Israel would not 
be one of his ancestors ; — in other words, his ances- 
tor, for the glory of David would overshadow all other 
ancestral dignity. 

This may seem extraordinary, but it is as certain as 
the evidence of figures. The time between David and 
Jesus was a little more than a thousand years. A 
thousand years, according to the common way of reck- 
oning, are equivalent to thirty generations, though 
twenty-five years are not a short time for population to 
double in, under favorable circumstances, and this 
would give forty duplications in ten centuries. The pas- 
sage before us distributes (i. 17) the thousand years 
between David and Jesus into twenty-eight generations, 
which very evidently is an inaccurate statement on 
the side of brevity, because four names are omitted, 
while only one is repeated. 

We will, however, assume the number of twenty- 
eight generations. There were twenty-eight persons 
in the series, each of whom lived long enough to have 
children. Now, if a man has two children, and if his 
descendants, taken one with another, have two chil- 
dren each, and if his posterity do not in any instance 
intermarry with each other, his posterity in the twenty- 
eighth generation will be two hundred and sixty-eight 
millions and a half in number ; considerably more 
than a quarter part of the present estimated popula- 
tion of the globe.* 

But, though a low ratio of increase is here assumed, 
this vast multiplication of individuals from one parent 
stock will not in fact take place, because, at different 
removes, descendants from one and the same parent 

* If any one doubts about the correctness of this statement, let him look 
at the following table, in which the first column represents the successive 



10 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 13-16. 

stock will intermarry with each other, and, as often as 
that takes place, the duplication of its posterity is ar- 
rested for that generation ; that is to say, when David's 
great-grandson marries David's great-granddaughter, 
the children of this union, whatever be their number, 
will constitute no larger a number of descendants from 
David than if only one of the parents had been of 
David's lineage. Allowance is to be made for this, 
and it will of course cause the number of descendants 
from one pair to fall very far below what it would be, 
if those descendants had uniformly contracted matri- 
mony with persons of different ancestry. 

Another allowance is to be made. The Jewish gene- 
alogies scarcely admitted the names of females. With 
them, a man was represented as descended from another 
man, only when he was descended from him in an un- 
broken male line. Such is the construction of both 
the genealogies of Jesus in the New Testament. Ac- 
generations from the first to the twenty-eighth, and the second the increase 
within that time, by duplication from a single pair : — 



1 


2 


2 


4 


3 


8 


4 


16 


5 


32 


6 


64 


7 


128 


8 


256 


9 


512 


10 


1024 


11 


2048 


12 


4096 


13 


8192 


14 


16384 



15 


32768 


16 


65536 


17 


131072 


18 


262144 


19 


524288 


20 


1048576 


21 


2097152 


22 


4194304 


23 


8388608 


24 


16777216 


25 


33554432 


26 


67108864 


27 


134217728 


28 


268435456 



See the article Consanguinity in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," if these 
principles do not appear too simple to require further elucidation. You and 
I, reader, have had more than a thousand millions of progenitors since the 
time of the Saxon heptarchy. Whoever you are, it is extremely probable 
that the blood of Egbert of England, and of Egbert's meanest menial, 
runs in the veins of both of us. 



I. 13-16.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 11 

cording to the Jewish view, then, the " sons of David " 
in the time of Jesus were only as many persons as 
were connected with David by a line of sons and fa- 
thers. No account was made of daughters and moth- 
ers in this heraldry. According to our modern usages, 
by which the wife takes the husband's name at mar- 
riage, that class of descendants which bears the fam- 
ily name exactly corresponds to that of which alone 
the Jews took notice in their genealogies.* 

Again ; by no means all the posterity of David lived 
in Judea at the time of our Saviour's birth. Some 
fifty thousand persons only, a mere fraction of the de- 
scendants of those who had been carried away at the 
captivity, returned with Zerubbabel and Ezra. (Ez. ii. 
64, 65 ; viii. 1 - 14.) Still those who did return were 
of the tribes of Judah (David's tribe) and Benjamin, 
and principally of the former. And it may be pre- 
sumed that, among the exiles who returned, one class 
preponderated, namely, that of the families whose head 
could trace his descent in the male line from David. 
The opinion had then for centuries been rooted in the 
national mind, that the male line of David was des- 
tined to give a magnificent monarch to Israel. Of 
course, they who knew themselves to be within the 
range of that distinction might be expected to be most 
forward to avail themselves of the Persian king's per- 
mission to return to the theatre of their past and fu- 
ture greatness. In other words, for this special reason, 
as well as on the more general basis of calculation, it 
may be fairly presumed, that of the returning exiles 
who repossessed and repeopled Judea, and were the 

* The occasional incidental mention of women in genealogies (i. e. Gen. 
xxv. 1 ; xxxv. 23 - 26 ; Matt. i. 3, 5, 6) constitutes no exception to this re- 
mark. Names of men are always given as constituting the links in the 
chain ; names of women, never. 



12 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 13-16. 

progenitors of the Jews contemporary with our Lord, 
a very large portion were of the male line of David. 

Make what allowances we will for such reasons as 
have been suggested, still, so many scores of mil- 
lions are to be thrown away from the rough computa- 
tion of the number of David's posterity at the end of 
a thousand years, before we come down to the actual 
population of Palestine at that time, that we may be 
strongly inclined to the opinion, that a very large por- 
tion of the population at that time was descended in 
the male line from David, and that not to belong to 
that lineage was rather the exception than the rule. 
And it is further to be remembered, in confirmation of 
this view, that in the earliest steps of the succession, 
where, from the nature of geometrical increase, the 
number of sons would have a more important effect 
than at any other place in the series on the number 
at the end of the line, we happen to be informed that 
the number of sons was considerable. David is re- 
lated to have had by his wives no fewer than nineteen 
(1 Chron. iii. 1-9), and his grandson, Rehoboam, 
twenty-eight (2 Chron. xi. 21). These instances, if 
taken into the calculation, would increase immensely 
the probable number of David's posterity in the male 
line at the end of twenty-eight generations. Num- 
bers might belong to that line without knowing it, 
or without the existence of any evidence to establish 
their title. And it would be a palpable mistake to 
suppose that, when the title " Son of David " was oc- 
casionally applied to our Lord (e. g. Matt. ix. 27), it 
was done by those who had investigated his genealogy, 
and who regarded the mere fact of being descended 
from David as a distinction. He was addressed, in 
such instances, as the particular son of David, who it 
was hoped would assume his ancestor's royal preroga- 



I. 13-16.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 13 

tive. He was greeted not merely as one who had 
David's blood in his veins, for in that an indefinite 
number of persons might compete with him ; but as 
that son who it was hoped would ascend David's throne. 
In other words, a synonyme of the title Messiah was 
used. 

But if these views are correct, why, it will be asked, 
should Evangelists think it worth while to show the 
descent of Jesus from David, supposing that Matthew 
has undertaken in some sense to do so % 

I reply, in the first place, that the descent of a dis- 
tinguished person is always an object of curiosity, and 
always a fit subject for his biographer. Had the gene- 
alogical lists represented Jesus, not as a descendant 
from David, but as having some origin less dignified, 
it would have been suitable for the author of a memoir 
of his life and ministry to record the result of his 
inquiries upon that point. Still more was the topic 
an interesting one, if the lists were found to represent 
Jesus as connected with the greatest of Jewish kings 
by a line running through Zerubbabel, the restorer of 
the nation after its great overthrow. But if the object 
was to point out circumstantially the descent of Jesus 
from David, in order to show that in him were fulfilled 
supernatural predictions uttered ages before, how 
comes it that we never, in the Gospels or Acts, find 
that argument presented for the conviction of unbe- 
lievers % Of all the characters in which the expected 
Messiah, as erroneously understood, is set forth by the 
ancient writers, none is more prominent than that of 
David's son. If, as the common interpretation sup- 
poses, his being David's descendant was a distinguish- 
ing fact, revealed ages before, to the end that, when he 
should come, the conformity of his lineage with that 
declaration should be one means of establishing his 
2 



14 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE " [I. 13-16. 

claim, how, I repeat the question, could it fail to be 
continually appealed to by Jesus and his Apostles for 
that purpose, when they called the attention of their 
countrymen to that claim] By both Jesus and his 
ministers, after he had announced himself as the Mes- 
siah, no argument could have been more fit to be 
urged with emphasis and repetition. But Jesus never 
once appealed to his extraction in corroboration of his 
claim. So far from it, that he once used language 
(Matt. xxii. 41 - 45 ; Mark xii. 35 - 37 ; Luke xx. 41 - 
44) which it would have been not at all surprising if 
his hearers had interpreted as an intimation that they 
were wrong in supposing that the Messiah would be 
one of David's posterity. Certainly, it had no ten- 
dency to make them regard that pedigree as a sign of 
the Messiah. And though Peter and Paul, the for- 
mer in one instance, the latter in three (Acts ii. 29 - 
32 ; xiii. 23 ;■ Rom. i. 3 ; 2 Tim. ii. 8), refer to the descent 
of Jesus from David, this is by no means presenting 
the topic with such frequency as, supposing it to be 
of the nature commonly imagined, we should expect, 
nor does either of these Apostles give such a statement 
of the genealogy of Jesus as would have been neces- 
sary to complete the argument on the common under- 
standing of it. Paul never calls Jesus expressly , the 
" son of David." In the three passages in which he 
refers to his descent, he speaks of him as " of the seed 
of David." Does not this peculiarity of expression 
denote that, having no human father, Paul did not 
think Jesus a " son of David " in the sense of the Old 
Testament writers of and after David's time, though 
he was of the posterity of David through Mary 1 * 

* May the suggestion be permitted, that the nativity of the Messiah as 
the son of David's daughter was the only nativity which would neither 
confirm, on the one hand, nor positively contradict, on the other, the un- 
founded expectation of the Jews ? 



I. 13-16.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 15 

Still, I think that, supposing the passage under our 
notice to have been an original part of Matthew's 
Gospel, a reason with him for its insertion may have 
been to remove from the minds of his countrymen a 
prejudice against Jesus, by showing them that, if their 
genealogical registers spoke the truth, his descent 
(supposing him to be a son of Joseph, as well as of 
Joseph's wife) was actually such as to correspond with 
an arbitrary standard by which they were resolved to 
try the Messiah's claims. " Shall Christ come out of 
Galilee 1 " asked some of them ; " hath not the Scrip- 
ture said that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and 
out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was % " 
(John vii. 41, 42.) They were in error. They fell 
into the error through ascribing supernatural au- 
thority to writings which did not possess it. God 
had instructed his people that in good time he would 
" raise up unto them a prophet like unto Moses." He 
had not instructed them that that prophet should be 
a descendant from David. Still, so prevalent was that 
idea among the contemporaries of Jesus and Matthew, 
especially among those of them who adhered to the 
sect of the Pharisees, that from many minds a great 
stumbling-block in the way of a reception of Jesus 
would be removed by an appeal to records which de- 
clared that King David was a progenitor of Jesus. 
And if such registers were known by Matthew to 
exist, it was much more in the way of his duty to pro- 
duce them and so to satisfy a prejudice, than it would 
have been to delay, in any quarter, the reception of 
the Gospel with which he was charged, till such time 
as he should be able to clear away from the minds of 
dull and unlearned Jews the mistakes entertained by 
them concerning the sense and authority of ancient 
writings. Supposing this suggestion to be well found- 



16 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 19. 

ed, we shall understand Matthew to be addressing 
them thus : You expect the Messiah to be a son of 
David, because you think that authorized messengers 
of God have so declared. By this you mean, accord- 
ing to the established force of such language among 
you, that the Messiah is to be a descendant from David 
in the male line. In that sense, however, Jesus was 
not a son of David, or of any man. He was miracu- 
lously born of only a female earthly parent. But if 
any of you deny this, and think he was a son of Jo- 
seph, then, on your own grounds, you may receive him 
for the Messiah, for Joseph was David's son. 

I. 19. 

Joseph was minded to put her away privily. 

For the law of divorce among the Jews, see " Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. I. pp. 471, 472. 

I. 21. 

Thou shalt call his name Jesus ; for he shall save his people 
from their sins. 

The name Jesus ('I^o-oO?) is but the Greek form of 
the Hebrew Joshua (#Vu'1n*), which means deliverer 
or saviour, being derived from the verb ()}V?\) signify- 
ing he saved. It appears to have been a not uncom- 
mon name among the Jews, at any period. The New 
Testament uses it in reference to the ancient contem- 
porary of Moses, and to a contemporary of the Apos- 
tles (Acts vii. 45 ; Heb. iv. 8 ; Col. iv. 11) ; and accord- 
ing to several manuscripts (see Griesbach, " Nov. 
Test." ad loc.) the question of Pilate (Matt, xxvii. 17) 
should read, " Which will you that I release to you, 
Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus called Christ % " Origen says 
(" Opp.," Tom. III. p. 918, edit. Delarue) that in many 



1.22,23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 17 

manuscripts of his day the name Jesus was omitted 
before Barabbas ; and u perhaps," he adds, " correctly, 
the name Jesus being inappropriate to a wicked man." 

I. 22, 23. 

Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be 
with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his 
name Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us. 

In the first place, what is the Evangelist's meaning 
when he says that the words which he quotes from 
Isaiah (vii. 14) were words " spoken of the Lord by 
the prophet " ? They are said to be " spoken of the 
Lord," because they are part of the discourse which 
Isaiah, in the poetical form in which he has cast the 
remonstrance addressed by himself to Ahaz, has rep- 
resented the Lord as speaking ; they are part of the 
discourse which Isaiah has (so to speak) put into the 
mouth of the Lord (Is. vii. 10, 14; comp. "Lectures," 
&c., Vol. II. pp. -115-417). — "By the prophet" 
(hia tov TTpofoirov). Rather, in the prophet ; that is, 
in the prophecy. (Comp. " Lectures," II. 387 ; IV. 
414, note §.) Aid, says Bretschneider (" Lexicon in 
Lib. N. T." ad voc), " is freely used by the Septuagint 
translators in rendering the prefixes 5 0^) an d J?." 
(For instances of Sid signifying in, see also Rom. iv. 
11 ; 1 Tim. ii. 15 ; 1 Pet. iii. 20.) But it is quite im- 
material, for the explanation of the text before us, to 
put this meaning upon 8id. The words were spoken 
by the prophet, because they are words of his com- 
position ; at the same time that they may properly be 
said to have been spoken of that is, by the Lord, in 
the sense above expounded. 

The question respecting the purpose with which 
passages of the Old Testament are quoted and applied 
2* 



18 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 22,23. 

by the writers of the New Testament, and by Jesus, 
their Master, in words of his reported by them, so far 
as that purpose is to be inferred from the form of lan- 
guage with which a quotation is introduced, is fully 
presented by this text. I shall, therefore, here treat 
the subject at some length, with statements and argu- 
ments to be referred to in the criticism of other texts, 
of the same description, which will come under our 
notice as we proceed. 

I will, in the first place, state my general views 
concerning the objects and force of those quotations 
in the New Testament from the Old, which give rise 
to questions of interpretation. In this respect I class 
them under four heads, which I will specify in lan- 
guage used by me in an earlier work. 

1. "To the first head belong those passages, which 
really were supernatural predictions, and really are 
referred to as such. For instance, when our Lord 
says, that Moses wrote of him (John v. 46), I under- 
stand him to refer to the supernaturally conveyed 
knowledge possessed by Moses of his future advent 
and character ; a knowledge naturally incident to 
Moses's office as minister of the preparatory dispensa- 
tion, and expressed by him, for example, in that 
prophecy appealed to by Peter in an address to his 
countrymen (Acts iii. 22) : c A prophet shall the Lord 
your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like 
unto me ; him shall ye hear in all things ' (Deut. xviii. 
15) ; as well as in Moses's record of the promise made 
to the first three Hebrew patriarchs, that in their pos- 
terity should ' all the kingdoms of the earth be blessed.' 
(Gen. xii. 3 ; xviii. 18 ; xxii. 18 ; xxvi. 4.) 

" And on this class of references, being to real proof 
texts, — supernatural predictions fulfilled, — I find 
occasion for two remarks. The first is, that they pre- 



I. 22, 23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 19 

sent no difficulty whatever in their application. The 
use of them in the New Testament does not strike the 
reader as foreign to their original sense, On the con- 
trary, it is the sense which he would naturally put 
upon them as they stand in their original connection. 
Secondly, I consider every instance of this class of 
references to he to the Law, the Pentateuch, the fiye 
books of the supernaturally endowed lawgiver Moses ; 
and not to any other part of Old Testament Scripture." 
(" Lowell Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity," 
Vol. II. pp. 237, 238.) 

2. In the second class of these quotations, " nothing 
but a legitimate rhetorical accommodation is designed. 
They are taken, as from their nature they may well 
be, indifferently from all parts of the Old Testament 
collection." (Ibid. p. 239.) 

3. " The third class of the texts in question consists 
of those, which are produced as references to, or proof 
of, the opinions entertained in ancient times concern- 
ing the Messiah who was eventually to appear ; and, 
when produced from any other part of the Old Testa- 
ment except the Pentateuch, they leave it an open 
question, as far as the mention of the Messiah is con- 
cerned, whether the authors of the language quoted 
possessed any supernatural information concerning 
him. That a great prophet was to come after himself, 
could be a fact known to Moses only through a direct 
divine communication. There was no other source 
whence he could derive it. They who came after him, 
however, knew it from his own recorded declaration ; 
and, for a series of ages, every Jew, on Moses's au- 
thority, without any new inspiration of his own on 
the subject, confidently and joyfully recognized the 
fact. Sometimes this last class of texts, indicative 
of the opinions of times between Moses and Jesus 



20 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 22, 23. 

respecting the coming Messiah, the nature of his 
office, the extent of his kingdom, and the spirit of his 
faith, are used by the Apostles in argument with the 
Jews of their own day. But there is no instance of 
this kind, where the argument used implies an asser- 
tion, on the part of the New Testament writers, of 
supernatural authority possessed by the authors of the 
Old Testament language which they quote." (Ibid, 
p. 241 ; comp. Acts xv. 15 - 18 ; Rom. ix. 26.) 

4. " The remaining class of the texts in question, 
akin to that last mentioned, does not so commonly 
comprehend particular quotations, but consists rather 
of references to the general tenor of the Old Testa- 
ment, showing to the Jews, that, on their own princi- 
ples of interpretation, without arguing the question 
whether those principles were correct or not, Old Tes- 
tament Scripture did not supply them with those ob- 
jections to the faith of Jesus which they imagined." 
(Ibid. pp. 242, 243 ; comp. 1 Cor. xv. 3, 4.) 

The quotation before us belongs, in my opinion, to 
the second of the classes above specified. The nature 
of such quotations as I consider to be exemplified by 
this text, I am now to illustrate. 

It is a common habit of writers, to give vivacity and 
variety to their compositions, by adopting from other 
well-known writers language which, either in its origi- 
nal sense, or in a sense which it is capable of expres- 
sing, is applicable to the case in hand. The more 
famous and the more familiar an author is, the more 
will he be quoted from in this way. Daniel Heinsius, 
the editor of Homer, says that there is scarcely a line 
of that poet, which has not been used by some ancient, 
in a sense different from that of the original. (Mich. 
" Introduction to the N. T.," Part I. chap. V. § 1.) It 
is a tendency of the mind, of the same nature as that 



I. 22, 23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 21 

which leads a speaker or writer to apply to the subject 
which he is treating, the terms of that branch of 
knowledge or practice with which he is conversant. 
Thus, the clergyman is often found employing his 
scriptural or theological vocabulary in his conversation 
about common things ; and the lawyer and the physi- 
cian, the farmer and the sailor, the chemist and the 
mechanic, convey and illustrate their ideas by phrase- 
ology supplied by the terms of their respective sciences 
and arts. 

If to any subject which they treated, native Jews, 
like other men, were to apply language of which their 
memory was full, of what language would they avail 
themselves but that of their Scriptures % If, like 
other men, native Jews, for the common purposes of 
style and expression, were to quote freely from es- 
teemed and familiar writers, from what writers should 
they quote except from those of the Old Testament I 
That collection comprehended almost the whole of 
their literature ; it comprehended all of their litera- 
ture which was of considerable antiquity and esti- 
mation. Their memories were so crowded with the 
language of the lawgiver and the old chroniclers and 
poets of the nation, that it would perpetually pre- 
sent itself unbidden, as often as any thing occurred 
which it would fitly describe ; and the allusions which 
it embodied were not only of a character dignified and 
exciting to the reader, but of a character of peculiar 
dignity and sacredness. How natural, and to a Jew 
how graceful, to embellish a narrative or description 
by the remark, " This reminds us of what we read of 
in such or such a place in Old Testament history " ; or, 
" This might be well described by language used on a 
different occasion by this or that ancient prophet." 

It would be easy, but it would be unprofitable, to 



22 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 22, 23. 

crowd these pages with examples from Pagan, Chris- 
tian, and Jewish writers, of the kind of quotation of 
which I speak. The correctness of the general state- 
ment which alone I have made thus far, will not be 
disputed in any quarter. But, it will be said, the 
stress of the question lies in the form of words by 
which a quotation is occasionally introduced by a New 
Testament writer. In particular, when Matthew says, 
in the text now before us, " All this ivas done that it 
might be fulfilled" &c, must he not be understood as 
saying, that events were supernaturally ordered so as 
to bring about an accomplishment of what had been 
supernaturally foreknown by Isaiah seven or eight 
centuries earlier, and declared by him in the passage 
which Matthew proceeds to quote % 

I will draw no argument from the original meaning 
of the passage in Isaiah ; because, on the one hand, we 
may misunderstand it, and, on the other hand, it is in 
a certain sense a supposable case that Matthew may 
have misunderstood it, though I believe nothing of 
that kind. But I answer, — 

1. Looking no further than to Matthew's own 
representation in this case, is it possible to under- 
stand him as declaring any thing of the kind sup- 
posed ] What does he say ] He says that part of 
the prediction (if prediction it had been) was as fol- 
lows : " They shall call his name Emmanuel (which 
is, being interpreted, ' God with us ')." Did they call 
his name Emmanuel ? By no means. Matthew him- 
self declares just the contrary, in the next verse but 
one (i. 25). He says that Joseph " called his name 
Jesus." And he says, further, that this was done agree- 
ably to a direction given to Joseph in a dream ; name- 
ly, " thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save 
his people from their sins " (i. 21). It is impossible 



I. 22, 23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 23 

to understand Matthew as representing Isaiah's lan- 
guage to be a prediction of Jesus, when Matthew 
himself declares that in one particular, which, sup- 
posing a prediction, was a substantive part of it as 
much as any other, it was actually contradicted by 
the event. 

2. There are four other instances in the New Testa- 
ment of a quotation being introduced, or a reference 
being made, by the same or a similar form of words 
(Matt. xxi. 4 ; xxvi. 56 ; John xv. 25 ; xix. 36). I 
shall treat of them in their respective places. At 
present I only ask whether any careful reader, be he 
Christian or infidel, really supposes John to have im- 
agined that the direction to the Israelites (in Exod. 
xii. 46) not to break the bones of the lamb eaten at 
the annual Paschal feast, so as to taste the marrow, 
was a prediction of the proceeding of the Roman sol- 
diers when they dealt with the body of Jesus differ- 
ently from the bodies of the thieves crucified with him. 
(John xix. 36.) Common sense has some claims, and 
it has only one answer to such a question. And if we 
will not undertake to maintain that John, when he 
used the words, " These things were done, that the 
Scripture should be fulfilled," &c., must be understood 
as indicating a literal prediction, then clearly we are 
ir. every other instance precluded from doing so by 
arguments drawn from the mere form of the language. 

3. From the nature of the argument, it is essential 
that, when an instance of supernatural foreknowledge 
is alleged, the precise words of the alleged prediction 
should be produced, to be compared with the actual 
event. But, in the present instance, this is not done. 
The variation from both the Hebrew and the Septua- 
gint in Matthew's word corresponding to they shall call, 
may be unimportant except as showing that Matthew 



24 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 22, 23. 

was not quoting with that scrupulous exactness which 
belongs to the kind of argument (erroneously, as I 
think) attributed to him in the present instance. But 
this it does show ; and this is a fact material to the 
inquiry in which we are engaged. A more significant 
fact is the rendering of the Hebrew word (HD?!?), 
which means a young woman, married or unmarried, 
by a word which so limits its sense as to denote only 
an unmarried female ; a freedom of translation on 
which Matthew (though countenanced by the Septua-- 
gint) could not fairly have ventured, had he intended 
any thing more than mere rhetorical accommodation. 
Had he designed the argument commonly attributed 
to him, the maiden condition of Mary was its main 
circumstance ; this is an idea which the original He- 
brew does not convey, whoever was the young woman 
that it spoke of; and accordingly Matthew would have 
been producing an argument, the very basis of which 
was a mistranslation of the passage quoted. I do not 
forget the probability that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, 
that is, the vernacular Hebrew of his day, and that 
his Gospel, as we have it, is a translation ; and I have 
framed my statements above accordingly. But whether 
Matthew's original preserved the exact sense of Isaiah's 
word (riD?i?)j hi which case the variation contained 
in the Greek version (irapOevos) is due to his trans- 
lator, or whether (as is in my view more probable) 
Matthew, intending only rhetorical accommodation, 
himself used a word corresponding to the Septuagint 
version, to make that accommodation more exact, in 
either case my argument is substantially the same. 
That is, either Matthew himself translated the He- 
brew word accurately, and then he could not pretend 
that there was any remarkable correspondence between 
the language of the passage and the circumstances of 



I. 22, 23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 25 

the birth of Jesus ; or he translated it inaccurately, 
which he might do with perfect propriety, if only rhe- 
torical embellishment was intended, but which he could 
not fairly do for the sake of producing an argument 
such as the original did not justify, and which, even if 
unfairly disposed, he could not have attempted to any 
purpose, through a misrepresentation of the meaning 
of so common a word. 

These considerations go to show that the common 
view of Matthew's purpose in using the words, " All 
this was done that it might be fulfilled," &c, is unten- 
able. I now proceed to explain and vindicate the 
interpretation which I think ought to be put upon 
them. 

" That it might be fulfilled " (tva irX^prndy). "What 
do these words mean in this connection % 

In its primitive sense, the verb (-rrXripow) here ren- 
dered I fulfil, signifies I fill, or I fill out. Such also 
is its common New Testament use (see, instar omnium., 
Matt. xiii. 48 ; Luke iii. 5 ; John xii. 3 ; xvi. 6 ; Acts 
ii. 2 ; v. 28 ; 2 Tim. i. 4). In such connections as 
that before us, it is impossible to maintain that, merely 
ex vi termini, the accomplishment of a supernatural 
prediction is intimated. The filling out, or fulfilling, 
or verification spoken of, is the same that we have in 
mind when we say, in the use of a scarcely different 
phraseology, The old saying was made good. It is of 
the same kind that the writer of the Second Epistle 
of Peter had in view, when he said (ii. 22), " It is hap- 
pened unto them according to the true proverb, ' The 
dog is turned to his own vomit again ' ; and, ' The sow 
that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.' " In 
repeated instances in which the word fulfil is used in 
connection with a sentence quoted, it seems impossible 
to doubt whether they refute the idea that that word 
3 ' 



26 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 22, 23. 

must be taken to import the accomplishment of a su- 
pernatural prediction. (See, e. g. Matt. xiii. 14, 35 ; 
John xviii. 9 ; James ii. 23.) Matthew (viii. 16, 17) 
says persons diseased in mind and body were cured by 
Jesus, " that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
by Esaias the prophet, saying, ' Himself took our in- 
firmities, and bare our sicknesses.' " But Peter (1 Pet. 
ii. 24) and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
(ix. 28) make a very different application of Isaiah's 
words. Which was right, on the common hypothesis % 
Or — one understanding Isaiah to have meant one 
thing, and the others another thing — were they all 
right, agreeably to some theory of double senses of the 
prophetical writings \ Or, finally, were they all right 
(as I believe), because they were all making a mere 
accommodation of Isaiah's language to a different oc- 
casion from that in reference to which he had used it? 

"That it might be fulfilled." The other material word 
in the clause is the conjunction that (tW). Does not 
this indicate design ? Does it not necessarily denote 
that the events previously related took place in order 
to create a correspondence with the language of a 
writer of the eighth century before % 

I assume that in our Greek Gospel of Matthew the 
form of the sentence is correctly translated from Mat- 
thew's original, supposing that original to have been 
in the vernacular language of Palestine. It belongs 
to a class of expressions equivalent to each other, and 
which there is no nicety in translating. "Whether we 
say to fulfil (et? rb TrXrjpovv^ or that it might be fulfilled 
(cva, or otto)? 7r\7]pco0rj) , the sense of the expressions, 
and of a literal rendering of them into all languages, 
will be the same. 

To do a thing ; that a thing may be done ; — in the 
common and authorized use of all languages, do these 



I. 22, 23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 27 

forms of expression necessarily denote design] De- 
ploring the fate of my friend lost at sea, I say, " He 
left his country only to meet his fate," or " that he 
might meet his fate." Is there any thing extraordinary 
in this expression ; or will it cause any one to under- 
stand me as meaning that my friend left his country 
intending to rush on his death] Is there any danger 
that I shall be supposed to refer to a design enter- 
tained by him \ "Will not every one see that it is only 
the event that I have in view % So the Psalmist says 
(li. 4) : " Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and 
done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justi- 
fied when thou speakest," &c. So Jeremiah (xxvii. 
15) represents Jehovah as speaking: " They prophesy 
a lie in my name, that I might drive you out, and that 
ye might perish." So the disciples in their question to 
Jesus (John ix. 2) : " Master, who did sin, this man, or 
his parents, that he was [rather, that he should be~\ born 
blind 1 " So Paul (Rom. i. 20) : " The invisible things 
of him from the creation of the world are clearly 

seen, so that they are [rather, that they may he~\ 

without excuse." So John (1 John ii. 19): "They 
went out from us that they might be made mani- 
fest that they were not ail of us." In such cases, taken 
from Scripture, though the form of expression belongs 
alike to all writings and languages, who dreams that 
the phraseology is intended to indicate design ? Who 
does not see that the result is what is referred to % 
(For other Scriptural examples, if desired, see Exod. xi. 
9; xvii. 3; Numb, xxxii. 14; Jer. vii. 18; Amos ii. 
7; Matt, xxiii. 33, 34; xxvi. 12.) 

Accordingly, that is, or should be, a familiar princi- 
ple of interpretation which is laid down by Glass where 
he makes a distinction between the " that indicating 
the design " (the cva antoXoyacov), and the " that indi- 



28 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 22, 23. 

eating the result " (the r lva Ik$cltikov), and says (" Phi- 
lologia Sacra," Lib. I. Tract. VII. Canon 19), "The 
causal conjunction (f^p 1 ?, wa, ut), and the equivalent 
expressions, do not always denote the final cause of a 
thing, but frequently the event." 

From ' this brief philological analysis, let us now 
pass to the usas loquendi, the practice of writers, which 
is the surest criterion of the meaning of words and 
combinations of words ; and, by a few examples from 
other sources, enable ourselves to judge what is the 
received and authorized force of such expressions as 
that in question. 

^Eiian (" Hist. Var.," Lib. III. cap. 29) says that Dioge- 
nes the Cynic used to say, " that he fulfilled (eWx^ot) 
and endured in himself all the curses of tragedy, for 
he was a vagabond," &c. Olympiodorus, in his Life 
of Plato, applying to him a line of Homer, says : " The 
bees came and filled his mouth with honey-comb, that 
it might be true of him, that ' song sweeter than honey 
flowed from his tongue.' " Cicero in his Oration for 
Publius Sextius (§ 57), referring to some lines, which, 
when recited, had been thought by the audience to be 
applicable to himself, says : " Of me the elegant poet 
wrote." Again, in his Oration for Cneius Plancius 
(§ 24), he quotes two lines which he says were ad- 
dressed to his sons by " a poet of eminence and talent," 
and then proceeds, " which lines their author wrote 
not to stimulate those royal youth to toil and honor, 
but to stimulate us and our children." Jerome (" Epist. 
103 ad Paulin.") uses this language: "In us is that 
Socratic saying fulfilled, ' This little I know, that I 
know nothing.' " (" Opp.," Tom. IV. Pars II. p. 574, 
ed. Martianay.) Commenting on the clause, " and 
babes shall rule over them" (Is. iii. 4), he applies it to 
the leaders of the Jews in his own day, and says that 



I. 22, 23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 29 

in them " the prophecy is fulfilled." (" Opp.," Tom. 
III. p. 36.) And again, on the words, "The child 
shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and 
the base against the honorable " (Is. iii. 5), he says 
(" Opp.," Tom. III. p. 37) that when this takes place, 
" that apostolic saying will be fulfilled, ' They shall 
bite one another, and be devoured by one another.' ' 
(Comp. Gal. v. 15.) Plutarch, quoting a line in which 
Homer describes Agamemnon, says (" De Fortun. 
Alexand.," Tom. VII. p. 310, edit. Tteisk.) that " Homer, 
in the same verse, set forth the greatness of Agamem- 
non, and uttered a prophecy of Alexander " (fxe/jLavrev- 
tcll). Epiphanius (" Opp.," Tom. I. p. 125, edit. Petav.) 
says that " in Ebion is fulfilled what is written, « I was 
almost in all evil.' " (Comp. Prov. v. 14.) Eusebius 
(" Hist. Eccles.," Lib. II. cap. 1), referring to the con- 
version of the Ethiopian officer by Philip (comp. Acts 
viii. 27-32), says : " So that the prophecy obtained its 
fulfilment in him, ' Ethiopia stretcheth forth her hands 
to God.' " (Comp. Ps. lxviii. 31.) Again (Ibid., cap. 
23), in a passage quoted from Hegesippus, relating to 
the martyrdom of James the Just : " They fulfilled 
that which is written in Isaiah (Is. iii. 11), 'Let us 
take away the just, because he is a reproach to us, for 
they shall eat the fruit of their doings.' " In a letter 
from the churches of Lyons and Vienne to those of 
Asia, preserved by the same writer (Ibid., Lib. V. cap. 
1), after a relation of some persecutions experienced 
by the former churches, it is said, " Then was fulfilled 
the declaration of our Lord, ' The day will come, when 
every one that slayeth you will think that he doth 
God service.' " (Comp. John xvi. 2.) And again 
(Ibid.) : " The madness both of the governor and of 
the people, as of some savage beast, blazed forth so 
much the more, to show the same wicked hatred to 
3* 



30 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 22, 23, 

us, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, c He that 
is unjust, let him be unjust still, and he that is 
righteous, let him be righteous still.' " (Comp. Apoc, 
xxii. 11.) 

A few specimens from the Syriac may be thought 
to have a peculiar weight, from the fact that the Syriac 
language was all but the same as that which was the 
vernacular tongue of Matthew and John. That is to 
say, the Syriac and Chaldee languages, though written 
in a different character, have the closest resemblance in 
other respects, — in grammar, vocabulary, and idiom ; 
and the language spoken in Palestine in the time of 
Jesus and his Apostles was a dialect between the two, 
called thence by scholars the Syro- Chaldee, and in the 
New Testament sometimes named the Hebrew. (John 
v. 2 ; Acts xxi. 40 ; comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. I. p. 
4, note.) It was this dialect which Matthew and 
John used as their native tongue, and it was in this 
Hebrew, probably, that Matthew composed his Gospel, 
if the early statements of his having written in He- 
brew are to be received. 

In an anonymous life of St. Ephrem the Syrian, 
written in Syriac, (Asseman. " Biblioth. Orient.," Tom. 
I. p. 35,) an angel is represented as charging him : 
" Take heed lest that Scripture be fulfilled in thee, 
4 Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught and loveth to 
tread out the corn,'" &c. (Comp. Hosea x. 11, and 
observe the important resemblance between this case 
and Matt. ii. 23, in respect to the paronomasia of the 
name.) In a more full life of that father, also in 
Syriac, prefixed to the collection of his works extant 
in that language, we find the following : " In him was 
fulfilled the word which was spoken concerning Paul 
to Ananias (Acts ix. 15), ' He is a chosen vessel unto 
me.' " (Sanct. Ephrem, "Opp. Syriace et Latine," Tom. 



1.22,23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 31 

III. p. xxiv.*) Again, in the same work (Tom. III. p. 
xlviii.), it is related that St. Basil said of him : " This 
is he of whom Christ in the Gospel speaks, ' I came 
to cast fire upon the earth.' " (Comp. Luke xii. 49.) 
Ephrem himself, the oldest of the writers in the Syriac 
language, whose works are extant, says of Aristotle 
("Opp.," Tom. II. pp. 317, 318): "He exactly fulfilled 
that which was written concerning Solomon the wise, 
that ' of those who were before or after, there has not 
been his equal in wisdom.' " (Comp. 1 Kings iii. 12.) 
Again, he says (Ibid., Tom. II. p. 513, Serm. xxxiii. 
" Advers. Hseres.") : " Infatuated men hate and reject 
what is good for them, as it is written, ' The Lord 
awoke, like one who slept.' " (Comp. Ps. lxxviii. 65.) 
The following sentence (Ibid., Tom. III. p. xxv.) pre- 
sents an example of reference to words not found in 
Scripture, illustrating in a peculiar way the freedom 
and inexactness with which such allusions were made : 
" The love and peace of Christ began to be diffused in 
the hearts of clergy and of believers, agreeably to what 
the Lord says in the Gospel, ' Blessed is that servant, 
by whom the name of his Lord shall be glorified.' " 

Let us glance at the Jewish writers, though what 
we have been speaking of belongs to a habit, not of 
the Jewish, or the Oriental, but of the human mind, 
and iElian, Cicero, Plutarch, Eusebius, and Jerome 
might serve us sufficiently, without reference to Syriac 
or Hebrew authorities. 

In the Book of Tobit, we read (ii. 5 - 7) : "I re- 
turned, and washed myself, and ate my meat in heavi- 
ness, remembering that prophecy of Amos, as he said 

* The reader must be careful to observe that the collection of St. 
Ephrem's works, in six volumes, is divided into two parts, of three volumes 
each ; Greek and Latin, and Syriac and Latin. The reference here is to 
the sixth volume of the series, but the third of the Syriac portion. 



32 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 22,23. 

(comp. Amos viii. 10), ' Your feasts shall be turned 
into mourning, and all your mirth into lamentation' ; 
therefore I wept." In the First Book of the Macca- 
bees (vii. 16, 17) it is said of one of the Syrian gen- 
erals: " He took threescore men, and slew them in 
one day, according to the words which he wrote (comp. 
Ps. lxxix. 2, 3), ' The flesh of thy saints have they 
cast out, and their blood have they shed round about 
Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them.' " In 
the book Berachoth (" Talmud. Babylon.," edit. Marin., 
Tom. I. fol. 57, foot of p. £*) it is said that a certain 
Mar, on entering Babylon, took up earth, and threw 
it beyond the Babylonish border, to fulfil that which 
is said,' " I will sweep it with the besom of destruc- 
tion." (Comp. Is. xiv. 23.) Again: "Abai said that a 
stormy wind does not last more than two hours, to 
fulfil what is said (Nahum i. 9), ' Affliction shall not 
rise up the second time.' " (" Talmud. Babylon.," Tom. 
I. fol. 59, p. 1, a little below the middle.*) In the 
book Kiddushin (" Mischna Surenhus.," Tom. III. p. 
367) we read: "Whosoever is versed in Scripture, in 
the Mischna, and in the ways of the world, will not 
speedily sin, as it is said, 4 A threefold cord is not easily 
broken.'" (Comp. Eccles. iv. 12.) Again (" Mischna 
Surenhus.," II. 266) : " Rabbi Eleazar said, 'Whosoever 
has not eaten on the night of the first day of the feast, 
should do it on the night of the last day of the feast. 
But the wise men say, there is no compensation in the 
matter ; of this it is said, ' That which is crooked can- 
not be made straight, and that which is wanting can- 

* I am thus particular in these references, to save the reader, who may 
wish to refer to the passages quoted, the trouble which. I have had of finding 
them without aid, in solid folio pages of the Talmudical dialect, without 
index, version, or typographical facility of any kind. He may find yet 
others of the same sort cited in Surenhusius , s BiftXos KaraXXayr]s, par- 
ticularly under Theses IT. and III. of the First Book. 



II. 3-6.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 33 

not be numbered.' " (Comp. Eccles. i. 15.) Again 
(" Mischna Surenhus.," II. 374) : " What shall I do to 
thee, who enjoyest thyself before the face of God, who 
does to thee according to thy wish 1 Thou art like a 
son rejoicing before his father, and doing to him ac- 
cording to his wish. Of thee the Scripture saith (comp. 
Prov. xxiii. 25), * Thy father and thy mother shall be 
glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.' ' These 
are but a few out of numerous examples of this form 
of expression which occur in the JViischna. I have 
not access to a copy of the Jerusalem Talmud. In an 
extract from it in Schaaf's " Opus Aramseum" (" Selec- 
ta Targum," &c, pp. 372, 373) is the following sen- 
tence : " When Rabbi Amun came befpre the king, he 
turned his head ; some came desiring to kill him, 
but they saw two fiery sparks proceeding from his 
neck, and let him go, to fulfil that which is said 
(comp. Deut. xxviii. 10), ' And all the nations of the 
earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the 
Lord, and they shall be afraid of thee.' " 

The result to which I would lead the reader by 
these remarks is, that Matthew, in the quotation 
which he introduces from Isaiah, merely meant to say, 
in the use of a customary device of rhetoric, that 
words, used by that ancient writer in an entirely dif- 
ferent application, might be adopted as applicable to 
those circumstances of the birth of Jesus which he, 
Matthew, was now describing. 

II. 3-6. 

When Herod the king had gathered all the chief priests 

and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them 
where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, "In 
Bethlehem of Judea ; for thus it is written by the prophet, 
' And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the 
least among the princes of Juda, for out of thee shall come 
a governor, that shall rule my people Israel.' " 



34 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 3-6. 

The words here quoted are from the prophet Micah 
(v. 2). It is not the Evangelist Matthew who ap- 
plies them to the circumstances of the Messiah's birth. 
He relates that the application was made by " the chief 
priests and scribes of the people," without intimating 
what he himself thought of its correctness. A strictly 
literal translation of the words, as they stand in the 
original Hebrew, is as follows : — 

" And [or, but] thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, little to 
be among the thousands of Judah ; from thee shall go 
forth to me to be a ruler in Israel." 

Which Dr. Noyes in his version correctly expresses 
thus : — 

" But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, 

Who art too small to be among the thousands of Judah, 
Out of thee shall come forth for me a ruler of Israel." 

The quotations in Matthew's Gospel, as in the other 
New Testament books, are generally from the Septua- 
gint version. But the Septuagint reading of this pas- 
sage literally follows the Hebrew, except that for 
" Bethlehem Ephratah " it has Bethlehem, house of 
Ephratah ; so that the New Testament quotation dif- 
fers equally from both. 

Perhaps the reference in the original (see " Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. III. p. 283) was not at all to the 
place of the Messiah's birth, but to that of the origin 
of his family, made so illustrious in the person of 
David and of his royal descendants. Such is a natural 
signification of the verb rendered shall come forth 
(N¥!), when used in this connection ; and in what fol- 
lows ( u whose origin is from the ancient age, from the 
days of old "), the word rendered " whose origin," or 
ivhose going forth (VJWlfto), is from the same root. 
(Comp. Gen. xvii. 6.) David, the founder of the royal 
family of Judah, was born at Bethlehem (1 Sam. xvi. 1 ), 



II. 3 - 6.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 35 

which was otherwise named in ancient times Ephrath 
(Gen. xxxv. 19), and was thus distinguished from 
another Bethlehem in the territory of Zebulun (Josh. 
xix. 15). Possessed, in common with all of his nation 
and time, with the idea that a royal descendant of 
David was to restore empire and greatness to Judah 
("Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 377-379, IV. 276- 
281), and cherishing that hope the more fondly on 
account of the calamitous circumstances under which 
he wrote, Micah gave form to his glad anticipations in 
the passage of which the words before us make a part. 
He said that from the stock of royalty planted ages 
ago in Bethlehem Ephratah, there should spring a 
hero, who should cause his people to " dwell in se- 
curity " from the Assyrian oppressors, and by his seven 
or eight generals " devour the land of Assyria with 
the sword, the land of Nimrod within her gates." 
(Mic. v. 2-6, et seq.; "Lectures," &c., Vol. III. pp. 
278-280, 282, 283.) 

But whether this was the whole force of Micah's 
language, or whether (as I think, on the whole, more 
probable) he supposed that David's birthplace would 
be also that of his great descendant, it appears that, 
among the punctilious and puerile interpretations of 
their ancient writers which prevailed among the Jews 
in the time of our Lord, and which he so often re- 
buked, this was one, — that Micah's language authori- 
tatively pointed out Bethlehem as the place which 
was to be honored by the personal " going forth " from 
it (in some sense) of the Messiah. We learn this from 
another text, in which the Evangelist John, recording 
a conversation which took place thirty years after that 
related by Matthew, writes as follows : " Many of 

the people said, ' Of a truth this is the prophet ' ; 

others said, ' This is the Christ ' ; but some said, ' Shall 



36 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 3- G. 

Christ come out of Galilee? hath not the Scripture 
said, that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out 
of the town of Bethlehem, where David was % ' " (John 
vii. 40-42.) 

Upon this I remark, in the first place, — 
That it does not clearly show that the persons here 
described as referring to Micah's words understood 
them as meaning, by the Messiah's " coming out of the 
town of Bethlehem," his birth at that place. It does 
not appear that inquiry had been made about his birth- 
place. If that had been the question, and the truth 
had been told, the objection would have been done 
away. What they knew was, that he had " come out 
of Galilee," when he appeared at Jerusalem, and as- 
sumed to be a public teacher; and this is what they 
seem to have considered as the inconsistency with 
Micah's description. They may have thought that his 
public manifestation was due, and that the prophet 
had declared it to be due, to that place where his great 
ancestor, the founder of his house, had received the 
royal unction from Samuel (1 Samuel xvi. 1, 13); 
that from that place he ought to issue when he came 
to Jerusalem to take possession of his throne. Now, 
supposing this to have been really the meaning of 
Micah's words (which I by no means think it was), 
then Jesus did not fulfil them ; his birth at Bethlehem 
was nothing to the purpose, for his childhood and 
manhood had been passed in Galilee, and when he 
came to Jerusalem, he came from that province. Sup- 
posing that those who used the words erroneously 
thought that this was their sense, then the birth. of 
Jesus at Bethlehem was no sign to them, and the 
prophet's language, even if really intended to desig- 
nate the Messiah's birthplace, had been too equivocal 
to be appealed to in the way of proof. 



II. 3-6] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 37 

But, though I have thought proper to suggest this 
view, I now waive it altogether, and, in what I am 
further to say, I proceed on the supposition that the 
persons whom John describes as referring to Micah's 
words had the same idea of their sense as " the chief 
priests and scribes," according to Matthew, had com- 
municated, thirty years before, to Herod. Now an in- 
terpretation, and an opinion founded upon it, so diffused 
among the people, and so permanent, that they lived 
through generation to generation, were of course known 
to Joseph and Mary. In process of time, it also be- 
came known to them that Mary was to be the mother 
of him who was to " save his people from their sins." 
Under such circumstances, what were they to do ? 
Bethlehem was sixty or seventy miles from Nazareth, 
the place of their residence. (Luke ii. 4.) Does any 
one imagine that, if, like their countrymen, they be- 
lieved (however erroneously) ancient prophecy to have 
declared that Bethlehem would be the Messiah's birth- 
place, she who knew herself to be the destined mother 
of the Messiah would remain at sixty or seventy miles' 
distance from Bethlehem, to await his birth at Naza- 
reth, and refute the prediction % Of course, she would 
go to Bethlehem in anticipation of that event, and 
thus the erroneous interpretation of language of an 
ancient writer, as containing a supernatural oracle, 
would bring about an event corresponding to that lan- 
guage in the mistaken sense which had been put upon 
it. (See « Lectures," &c, Vol. III. p. 337.) 

But were not Joseph and Mary better critics of the 
Old Testament than their countrymen and neighbors ? 
I see no reason to imagine it. But suppose they were, 
what then ] Suppose that, while " the chief priests 
and scribes " were informing the king that Micah had 
announced Bethlehem as the Messiah's birthplace, and 
4 



38 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 3-6. 

while such was the opinion that everywhere prevailed, 
Joseph and Mary had read Micah's prophecy with 
better judgment, and put a truer construction upon 
his words. What should they do then ] Were they 
causelessly and wilfully to outrage the common opin- 
ion, and erect an obstacle to the reception of the future ^ 
claims of Jesus at the very outset 1 Luke says (ii. 3, 4) 
that, to be enrolled, — to give his name to the census, 
— Joseph had to go to Bethlehem, " because he was 
of the house and lineage of David." But he was to 
go thither only for the transaction of a business which 
would be very briefly despatched. It was not necessary 
that he should make any stay at Bethlehem for that 
purpose. It was a place within six miles of Jerusalem, 
to which he might immediately have returned when 
his interview with the enrolling officer was over, and 
his duty in respect to the census done ; and it was a 
small suburb, perhaps with only one inn (Luke ii. 7), 
and such as could not have accommodated, so much 
as for a single night, any considerable portion of those 
who were of " the house and lineage of David," And 
though Luke says that it was necessary for Joseph to 
repair to Bethlehem, and gives the reason, he does not 
say or imply that it was necessary for Mary to accom- 
pany him. He was there to give an account of him- 
self and his family, which he could do alone as fully, 
as credibly, and as responsibly as if he brought them 
with him. It would be preposterous to suppose that, 
either for the reason of any convenience in taking the 
census (an operation expensive enough without any 
such useless addition), or by force of any arbitrary 
rule, whole families, through the whole circuit of a 
nation, men, women, and children, old and young, sick 
and healthy, were obliged to make journeys from their 
homes to the respective places where their ancestors 
had settled on the first partition of the lands. 



II. 3-6.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 39 

But Mary desired that, since her son was to be the 
Messiah, he should be born at Bethlehem, because 
such was the expectation of the people, and, whether 
she shared in their view of Micah's words or not, it 
was not fit that she should interpose any obstacle to 
the success of her son's future pretensions, by giving 
birth to him in some other place. Her husband had oc- 
casion to go to Bethlehem, to make his report there to 
an enrolling officer, agreeably to the imperial decree. 
It is probable that he might have chosen his time out 
of many weeks, or even out of several months ; for the 
taking of a census was a long process. (Prideaux's 
"Connection," Part II. Book IX. pp. 505-507, edit. 
1718.) It is probable that, had no other object than that 
of his enrolment been in contemplation, he would have 
made his short residence at the capital city, fi\e or six 
miles off, instead of at the poor village of Bethlehem. 
But the time when the birth of Mary's son approached 
was the time that was chosen, in order that she too 
might make the journey, and that Bethlehem might be 
his birthplace, agreeably to the common expectation 
of the Messiah. 

Let any one who supposes that the birth of Jesus 
at Bethlehem was divinely designed as a token of the 
Messiah, and was accordingly predicted as such many 
centuries beforehand, consider how unsuitable such an 
event would have been to such a use. How many 
children of inhabitants of Bethlehem were born there 
from age to age ; and how easy would it have been for 
any Jewish mother to gain for her child the advantage 
of a false claim to be the Messiah, through a true 
claim to be a person in whose favor the prediction had 
been fulfilled ! 

I began my comments on this text by remarking on 
two particulars of the want of precision in Micah's 



40 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 14, 15. 

language, which rendered it unsuitable to yield satis- 
faction as to the correspondence of an event with it. 
I will suggest yet another. From Herod's course in 
putting to death all the children of Bethlehem under 
two years old (Matt. ii. 16), it may be inferred that his 
advisers, " the chief priests and scribes of the people," 
understood Micah to have meant that the Messiah's 
parents would be residents, and not chance sojourners, 
in Bethlehem. But if so, the fact did not correspond 
with their interpretation of Micah's words. 

II. 14, 15. 

When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by 
night, and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death 
of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the 
Lord by the prophet, saying, " Out of Egypt have I called my 
son." 

The reference is to the prophecy of Hosea (xi. 1), 
where we read as follows : " When Israel was a child, 
then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." The 
words are part of a discourse which, by the rhetorical 
device so common with the prophets (" Lectures," &c, 
Vol. II. pp. 415 -417), and not uncommon with other 
writers, Jehovah is represented as uttering. It is 
therefore with strict propriety that the Evangelist 
quotes them as " spoken of the Lord by [or in] the 
prophet." 

It is perfectly evident that by the original words 
Hosea intended no prediction whatever. The Septua- 
gint text reads, " Oat of Egypt have I called his [Is- 
rael's] children." But that is immaterial. Whether 
Jehovah's son or Israel's children, nothing can be clearer 
than that it is the Jewish people that is here signified 
(comp. Ex. iv. 22, 23), and that its past conduct and 
fortunes, and not any future events, are the subject of 



II. 14, 15.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 41 

the passage. In the infancy of the nation, Jehovah, 
through his love for them, led them out of Egypt by 
the ministry of Moses. (Hos. xi. 1.) They strayed 
into idolatrous practices (ibid. 2), yet he did not re- 
nounce them, but dealt forbearingly and tenderly with 
them (ibid. 4) ; and so on. There is not a word here 
which it is possible to understand as spoken by Hosea 
of the future Messiah, in any sense. Whatever we 
may think of Matthew's capacity and authority as an 
interpreter of the Old Testament, — whether we as- 
cribe to him infallible knowledge, or only the most 
limited knowledge compatible with the smallest degree 
of common sense, — it is impossible to imagine that he 
could understand Hosea as speaking here of the future 
Messiah. 

So clear is this case, that I consider the text as hav- 
ing the highest importance in its bearing on the gen- 
eral argument respecting the force of quotations from 
the Old Testament in the New. If Matthew, calling 
to mind a passage of Hosea, in which, in terms so 
plain that Matthew could not misunderstand them, 
the exodus of the people was referred to historically, 
could quote the words in reference to an event seven 
or eight hundred years subsequent to the quoted writer, 
then it is as certain as any thing of the kind can be, 
that Matthew did not intend to represent that event 
as accomplishing a prediction contained in those words. 
And if, in such a case as this, when the supposition of 
prediction accomplished is absolutely preposterous and 
out of the question, the Evangelist could introduce 
his quotation with the formal words, " that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet," 
then it follows, that in no case whatever does the for- 
mality of that introduction permit us to infer that the 

Evangelist points to the words which he quotes as 

4# 



42 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 16-18. 

containing a prediction, of which events have brought 
about the accomplishment. 

Matthew simply suggests, in reference to the return 
of Jesus in his childhood from Egypt to Palestine, 
that God, in accomplishing the second great deliver- 
ance for his people, may be said to have done what 
the prophet had said he did in accomplishing the first ; 
that is, to have called his son out of Egypt. And this 
is the nature of quotations of this kind, of which such 
a great mystery and perplexity has been made. 

II. 16-18. 

Then Herod sent forth, and slew all the children that 

were in Bethlehem Then was fulfilled that which was 

spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, " In Rama was there 
a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourn- 
ing, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be com- 
forted, because they are not." 

The quotation is from Jeremiah (xxxi. 15 ; comp. 
" Lectures," &c., Vol. III. p. 362). In the passage of 
which it makes part, Jeremiah is referring to the deso- 
lation of the northern kingdom. Of that kingdom, 
Ephraim, of which Rachel was the ancestress (Gen. 
xlvi. 19, 20), was the chief tribe, and Ramah was one 
of its cities (1 Sam. i. 1). Accordingly, the poet, in 
the genuine spirit and style of his art, represents Ra- 
chel as weeping among the ruins of Eamah, and re- 
fusing consolation because her children were not there. 
Six hundred years after this, another slaughter takes 
place. It is true it takes place, not in Ramah, but in 
Bethlehem ; and Rachel has no concern with it, be- 
cause Bethlehem is in Judah, and that tribe is de- 
scended, not from her, but from her sister Leah (Gen. 
xxxv. 23). There was no occasion for weeping in 
Ramah, when the children of Bethlehem were put to 



II. 23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 43 

death. There would have been no propriety in repre- 
senting Rachel as bereaved on that occasion, for the 
children of Bethlehem were no children of hers. And 
her lamentation described by the ancient prophet was 
on account of a state of things existing in his own 
time, and not of an event contemplated by him as 
future. All this Matthew knew and understood, quite 
as well as we. And it is impossible that he should 
have intended to say that there was a prediction of 
Jeremiah, where every intelligent reader sees that there 
was none ; that there was a prediction of weeping 
in Ramah of Ephraim, which was fulfilled by a weep- 
ing in Bethlehem of Judah ; and that a prediction of 
Rachel's sorrow for her children was fulfilled in the 
death of children who were not of her blood. — We 
have to trifle very absurdly with words, in the attempt 
to prove that Matthew trifled with them, if possible, 
more absurdly still. If we will dismiss such idle and 
unauthorized refinements, and bring to his Gospel the 
good sense which we should not refuse to any other 
book but the Bible, we shall see that the language 
simply expresses the plain and pertinent meaning ; — 
the sharp and comfortless distress of bereaved mothers 
at Bethlehem, at this time, might be well described in 
language used anciently by Jeremiah when he was 
speaking of the desolation of Ram ah and Ephraim. 

II. 23. 

He came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, " He shall be 
called a Nazarene." 

Here we get new light, from a different side, on the 
force, or rather the wo-force, (that is, of any such kind 
as has been commonly ascribed to it,) of this very for- 
mal manner of quotation. Nowhere in the Old Testa- 



44 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 23. 

ment can we find the words said by Matthew to be 
" spoken by [or in] the prophets, ' He shall be called 
a Nazarene.' " What then did he refer to % I have 
very little doubt that it was to a text in the Book of 
Judges (xiii. 5), where it is said of Samson that " he 
shall be a Nazarite." It is true that Matthew's word 
(NaCppaLos) is not the same as that (va#p) by which the 
Hebrew (*W3) is rendered in the Vatican copy of the 
Septuagint. But in the Alexandrian copy (Judges xiii. 
5), in the Vatican copy (Lam. iv. 7), and in Josephus 
(" Antiq. Jud.," Lib. IV. cap. iv. § 4), we find Greek 
forms of the same word (ya&pcuot, and va&ipaioi) all 
but identical with that of Matthew, and therefore it 
may be presumed that this latter form was in quite as 
familiar use as the former. 

Again, let us apply to this case the probable opin- 
ion that Matthew wrote in his vernacular tongue. 
Whether we call it Hebrew or Syro-Chaldee (see above, 
p. 30) is immaterial ; it bore a close resemblance to 
the Syriac. If he meant, as I have supposed, to refer 
to Judges (xiii. 5), he would adopt the Hebrew word 
(Tf-5) with as little alteration as the structure of the 
dialect in which he was writing would permit. Now 
in the Syriac version of his Gospel we find an an- 
swering word, which I express as nearly as it can be 
in Hebrew letters, since where I print we have no 
Syriac types (NHjJ). This form, or something close- 
ly resembling it, it is likely that Matthew, in his origi- 
nal, used as the rendering of the word (Tf3) in Judges 
(xiii. 5). And of this form, when in the translator's 
hands it came to be transferred to the Greek of our 
present Gospel, the word (Na&paios) which we find, 
would be an easy and natural expression. 

Matthew says that he is making a quotation ; " that 
it might be fulfilled which was spoken by [or in] the 



II. 23.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 45 

prophets, ' He shall be called a Nazarene.' " Except 
that which I have suggested, I know no account of 
his quotation which has the smallest probability. But 
supposing this account to be correct, it throws impor- 
tant light on the purport of this large class of quota- 
tions made from the Old Testament in the New. They 
are not assertions of prediction fulfilled. They are 
easy and natural rhetorical embellishments, — adapta- 
tions, accommodations, applications (of a kind recog- 
nized by all nations, and in almost all sorts of compo- 
sition), of expressions in common use, or expressions 
of some well-known writer, to some original sentiment, 
some passing event, or some habit or opinion which 
attracts notice. Between Samson, " a Nazarite unto 
God from the womb," and Jesus, whose mother " came 
and dwelt in a city called Nazareth," there was no 
actual, real resemblance because of those facts, — 
nothing, certainly, that made the residence of Jesus at 
Nazareth a literal fulfilment of any prediction that 
had been uttered respecting Samson's ascetic habits. 
But an ambiguous word (JVaf« palo?) signified either a 
Nazarite, which Samson was, or a Nazarene, which 
Jesus was ; and Matthew, struck with the ambiguity, 
takes occasion from it, by a sort of conceit (I must use 
that word, for want of a more dignified one, to convey 
the idea), to apply, to the latter, words used by an Old 
Testament writer concerning the former. Could he 
have anticipated what a race of critics would arise in 
after times, and what would be the cost of his indul- 
gences, in this way, of a writer's natural taste, it may 
be presumed that he would have scrupulously ab- 
stained from its gratification, 



46 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 1, 2. 

III. 1,2. 

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilder- 
ness of Judea, and saying, " Repent ye, for the kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." 

When John the Baptist spoke of the " kingdom of 
heaven," he evidently used a form of words not new 
to those whom he was addressing. It is plain that it 
was of something which they were expecting that he 
spoke, when he told them that it was near at hand. 

The " kingdom of heaven," the " kingdom of God " 
(Matt. vi. 33), and the " kingdom of the Son of man" 
(xiii. 41), are equivalent expressions. In my work on 
the Old Testament (e. g. " Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 
377 - 384 ; IV. 276 - 279), I have explained repeatedly 
and at length the nature and the origin of the concep- 
tions which those phrases were intended to convey. 
God designed in good time to follow and supersede 
the institutions of Moses with a religious dispensation 
more complete ; and accordingly the lawgiver was au- 
thorized to announce to his people, " The Lord thy 
God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst 
of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me." (Deut. xviii. 
15.) It was also recorded in traditions preserved by 
Moses, that Abraham had received promises from Je- 
hovah of a royal issue from his stock. (Gen. xvii. 6, 
16 ; xxxv. 11 ; comp. xii. 3 ; xviii. 18 ; xxii. 18 ; xxvi. 
4 ; xxviii. 14.) As early as the institution of the 
monarchy, — as early, at all events, as the time of 
David, — these two ideas came to be combined ; and a 
royal prophet, or propagator of divine truth, — a hero 
of irresistible martial prowess, of venerable wisdom, 
of splendid talents for administration, and of burning 
zeal for the Law, — became the hope of the nation. 
Under his conduct, their country should rise to a 
height of unprecedented glory. " Kings should see 



III. 1, 2.] GOSPEL OE MATTHEW. 47 

them and stand up, yea, princes, and do them homage " ; 
and all the glories so emulously described in the books 
of the Psalms, the prophets, and others, were to clus- 
ter around Jerusalem and Zion. The Messiah (equiv- 
alent to the Christ in Greek and the Anointed in Eng- 
lish) became the special name of the fancied sovereign, 
and the phrases " the kingdom of heaven " and " the 
kingdom of God " designated the Jewish empire which 
was to be established. So, for instance, Micah (iv. 7) 
spoke of it while the first Jewish kingdom yet stood : 
" I will make the halting a remnant, and the far-scat- 
tered a strong nation." And the author of the Book 
of Daniel (ii. 44), after it had fallen : " In the days of 
those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom 
which shall never be destroyed ; and the kingdom 
shall be left to no other people ; but it shall break in 
pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall 
stand for ever " ; and again (vii. 13, 14) : " I saw in the 
night visions, and behold, one like a son of man came 
with the clouds of heaven, and came to the aged per- 
son, and they brought him near before him ; and there 
was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, 
that all people, nations, and languages should serve 
him ; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which 
shall not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be 
destroyed." (Comp. Dan. vii. 27.) 

Such were the anticipation and the hope transmitted 
from generation to generation of the Jews, and which 
prevailed among them at the time when Jesus appeared. 
Such was the expectation of the " kingdom of heaven " 
or " kingdom of God," cherished at that time with 
even more interest than at some others, because of the 
depression to which the nation was then reduced. 
And when " in those days came John the Baptist, 
preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, 



48 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 3. 

' Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,' " 
such as has been described was, without doubt, the 
new state of things, the establishment of which he 
was understood by his hearers to announce. That he 
himself had any more correct idea of the nature of 
the revolution about to take place, there is no reason 
whatever to suppose. He calls on his countrymen to 
repent, or reform, by way of preparation for a share in 
the benefits of the coming kingdom, because, according 
to the established opinion, the " Redeemer who was to 
come to Zion " was to " turn away ungodliness from 
Jacob," and establish a society free from all injustice, 
dissension, and offence. (Is. xi. 1-13; lix. 20; lx. 
21 ; Ezek. xx. 43 ; Mai. iv. 1 - 6.) 

III. 3. 

This is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, 
" The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 4 Prepare ye 
the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.' " 

The words quoted are taken from the book of Isaiah 
(xl. 3), with one slight variation from the Septuagint 
text, and two from the Hebrew. The original writer, 
in the time of Cyrus, encouraging himself that the 
time is close at hand for his countrymen to be released 
from their captivity at Babylon and restored to their 
home, expresses his exulting hope under the image of 
hearing a voice command the construction of a straight 
and level road through the intervening wilderness, for 
the people, marshalled by their guardian God, to travel 
back and repossess their ancient domain. (" Lectures," 
&c., Vol. III. pp. 237 - 239.) In point of fact, this 
language, and the occasion to which it relates, have 
nothing to do with the appearance of our Lord's her- 
ald, John the Baptist, " in the wilderness of Judea." 
But the words applied by the ancient writer to the 



III. 3.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 49 

one case admitted of an easy and graceful application 
to the other ; and that application, in the use of a 
common device of rhetoric, Matthew makes. 

" This is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esai- 
as." Is there any thing in that phrase to refute the 
above explanation 1 Suppose we were recommending 
a candidate for office, should we have any hesitation 
in saying, " You have often heard descriptions of the 
man needed for this place ; here is the very man so 
described " 1 Yet literally it was not true that the 
description had been drawn from that man ; the de- 
scription had been made independently of him, and 
afterwards he was observed to correspond with it. In 
the Epistle of Jude (14) we find these words : " Enoch 
also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, say- 
ing, ' Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of 
his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to con- 
vince all that are ungodly among them of all their 
ungodly deeds,' " &c. Who understands the writer 
as meaning that his own contemporaries were the per- 
sons whom the antediluvian Enoch (or whoever had 
assumed his name) had in view, when he uttered these 
words of warning'? Who does not naturally and in- 
stinctively perceive the sense to be, that the sinners of 
the writer's time might be aptly rebuked in words 
which he quotes as Enoch's, anciently used on a dif- 
ferent occasion, and respecting different persons ] (See 
above, pp. 28-31.) 

" This is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias." 
Has this language any material bearing on the ques- 
tion whether Isaiah was the author of the fortieth 
chapter of the book which goes by his name % On 
the contrary, it is our custom to refer to a composition 
by its common title, whatever may be our opinion of 
the correctness of that title. We speak of " the poem& 
5 



50 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 17. 

of Ossian," instead of using so inconvenient a periph- 
rasis as " the poems of Macpherson, pretended by 
him to have been written by an ancient bard, named 
Ossian." A scholar quotes a fable " of iEsop," and 
an ode " of Anacreon," while he is satisfied in his own 
mind that they are pieces which did not proceed from 
the writers so named. (See, on this subject, " Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 180, 181, 235, 236.) 

III. 17. 

And, lo, a voice from heaven, saying, " This is my beloved 
son, in whom I am well pleased." 

This text presents the important question of the 
sense in which the title " Son of God " is given to 
Jesus in the New Testament. 

The origin and explanation of the title are to be 
found in an idiom of the Old Testament ; and that is 
the circumstance which brings it within the scope of 
our present investigation. A common form of speech 
among the Jews was, to call by the name of son of 
any person or thing, whatever was connected with that 
person or thing, whatever resembled it, or resulted from 
it Thus a "son of Belial" (1 Sam. ii. 12) is a bad 
man ; a " son of a murderer" (2 Kings vi. 32) is a san- 
guinary person ; " son of perdition " (John xvii. 12), 
one that deserves perdition ; " son of man " (Ps. viii. 
4), a human being ; " son of peace " (Luke x. 6), a 
peaceable individual ; " sons of flame " (Job v. 7), 
sparks; "son of the morning" (Is. xiv. 12), Lucifer, 
or the morning star. In like manner those who re- 
semble God, or are regarded as acting with his au- 
thority, or otherwise signalized by his favor, are called 
his sons. God is represented as saying to David con- 
cerning Solomon (2 Sam. vii. 14), " I will be his fa- 
ther, and he shall be my son"; and again (1 Chron. 



III. 17.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 51 

xxviii. 6), " Solomon shall build my house and my 
courts, for I have chosen him to be my son." " Thus 
saith the Lord," said Moses to Pharaoh (Exod. iv. 22, 
23), " Israel is my son, even my first-born ; and I say 
unto thee, let my son go, that he may serve me." 
"When Israel was a child," Hosea (xi. 1) represents 
Jehovah as saying, " then I loved him, and called my 
son out of Egypt." The conception and phraseology 
in question appear equally in the New Testament. 
Paul writes to the Galatians (iii. 26), " Ye are all the 
children of God by faith in Christ Jesus " ; to the 
Corinthians (2 Cor. vi. 17, 18), " ' I will receive you, and 
be a father to you, and ye shall be my sons and daugh- 
ters,' saith the Lord Almighty " ; to the Romans (viii. 
14), " As many as are led by the spirit of God, they 
are the sons of God." St. John writes (1 John iii. 
1, 2), " Behold what manner of love the Father hath 
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons 
of God ; beloved, now are we the sons of God." 

Such being the settled use to which the Jews put 
the title, they would of course apply it, by eminence, 
to their expected Messiah. Favored of God above all 
others, he especially would be entitled to be called 
God's son. If the name was suitable to rulers, then 
especially to him to whom were to be given " domin- 
ion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, 
and languages should serve him." If it was descrip- 
tive of righteous men, and of men efficient in ac- 
complishing God's purposes, then eminently of that 
" righteous servant " of God who " by his knowledge " 
was to "justify many." 

Thus it was, — it could not have been otherwise, — 
that, at the time of the appearance of Jesus, among 
the names commonly applied to the expected deliverer, 
(as " King of Israel," expressive of his office, as that 



52 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 17. 

was understood, " Son of David," indicative of his de- 
scent, and " Messiah," or Christ, denoting the form of 
induction to the royal dignity,) was that of " Son of 
God," implying the divine favor extended and the di- 
vine authority delegated to him. These titles, and 
others, were used as signifying the same office, — the 
same person, — and were used indifferently. 

Thus John the Baptist, " looking upon Jesus as he 
walked, saith, ' Behold the Lamb of God.' " (John i. 
36.) " Andrew, who heard this, said to his brother Si- 
mon, 'We have found the MessiasJ " (Ibid. 41.) Phil- 
ip, their neighbor, " findeth Nathanael, and saith unto 
him, ' We have found him of whom Moses in the Law 
and the prophets did write.' " (Ibid. 45.) And Na- 
thanael, in his turn, on coming to Jesus, said, " Rabbi, 
thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel." 
(Ibid. 49.) In short, the several titles, though taking 
their different forms from the respective aspects in 
which the expected hero was viewed, were, in their 
application, equivalent. The demoniacs whom Jesus 
cured at Capernaum cried out, " saying, ' Thou art 
Christ, the Son of God.' " (Luke iv. 41.) The council 
who examined him before he was carried before Pilate, 
asked him, "Art thou the Christ?" (Luke xxii. 67.) 
And when they repeated the question, it was in the 
words, " Art thou then the Son of God ? " (Ibid. 70.) 
By Matthew (xvi. 16) near Cesarea Philippi, Peter is 
related to have said to Jesus, " Thou art the Christ, 
the son of the living God " ; and the profession was of 
that extreme importance, that it is difficult to sup- 
pose that either Evangelist would have omitted either 
of the two phrases, if he had recognized any difference 
in their meaning. Yet by Mark (viii. 29) we find 
Peter only related to have said, " Thou art the Christ" 
and by Luke (ix. 20) , " The Christ of God " ; and 



III. 17.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 53 

after Peter's declaration our Lord is recorded (Matt, 
xvi. 20) to have " charged his disciples that they 
should tell no man that he, Jesus, was the Christ" 
which was not all nor the chief of what he would 
have forbidden them to disclose, if there had been a 
separate meaning in the phrase Son of God. " Is it 
not written in your Law," said Jesus (John x. 34-36), 
" ' I said, Ye are gods V If he called them gods unto 
whom the word of God came (and the Scripture can- 
not be broken), say ye of him whom the Father hath 
sanctified and sent into the world, ' Thou blasphemest,' 
because I said, ' I am the Son of God ' ? " His being 
sanctified and sent into the world by God, — in other 
words, his being the Christ, the legate of God, — is the 
reason he himself assigns for calling himself God's 
son ; and this, in an express and formal justification of 
the propriety of his assumption of the title. 

If the reasoning above is correct, then no mystical 
conception of the metaphysical nature of Jesus was 
intended to be expressed in the Scripture phrase, Son 
of God. In whatever is peculiar of its application to 
him, it is simply a title of office, equivalent to, and 
interchangeable with, the title of Messiah. The 
" voice from heaven," which, after his baptism by John, 
hailed him as God's well pleasing and " beloved son," 
was neither more nor less than a recognition of him 
in the character of that great reformer and deliverer, 
whom (with whatever degree of misapprehension of 
his true office) the chosen people had been expecting 
from age to age, on the authority of their great law- 
giver's promise (Deut. xviii. 15), that " a prophet would 
the Lord their God raise up unto them of their breth- 
ren, like unto himself." 
5* 



54 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 13-16. 

IV. 13-16. 

Leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is 
upon the sea-coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephtha- 
lim ; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias 
the prophet, saying, "The land of Zabulon, and the land of 
Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee 
of the Gentiles, the people which sat in darkness, saw great 
light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of 
death, light is sprung up." 

In the book of Isaiah (ix. 1, 2) we read, according 
to the Hebrew : * "Of old he brought the land of 
Zebulon and the land of Naphtali into contempt. 
In future times shall he bring the land of the sea be- 
yond Jordan, the circle of the Gentiles, into honor. 
The people that walk in darkness behold a great light ; 
they who dwell in the land of death-like shade, upon 
them a light shineth." 

Of the Septuagint Greek a literal translation is as 
follows, viz. : " Make haste the land of Zebulon, 
the land of Nephthalim, and other inhabitants of the 
sea-coast, and Galilee of the Gentiles beyond the Jor- 
dan. Thou people that walkest in darkness, behold a 
great light ; ye who dwell in a region [which is] a 
shadow of death, light shall shine upon you." •)• 

* That is, if we change the division between the eighth and ninth chap-" 
ters, which in the Hebrew occurs at the beginning of the last period of the 
passage quoted, so that the ninth chapter begins " The people," &c. If 
we regard the Hebrew division, of course the discrepance between the origi- 
nal and Matthew's quotation is greatly increased. 

f The text stands thus in the Chaldee : "Formerly Zebulun and Naph- 
tali emigrated, and those of them who remained shall be led by a mighty 
king into captivity, because they did not remember the power which was 
manifested at the Red Sea, and the miracles at Jordan, and the war of the 
cities of the nations. The people of the house of Israel, which walked in 
Egypt as in darkness, came forth to see a great light ; upon those who 
dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, light has arisen." The Syriac 
varies the reading materially, in a still different way. In such an un- 
certainty of the text, "it is impossible to frame that argument from supernatu- 
ral prediction, of which an ascertained text must be the basis. 



IV. 13-16.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 55 

It is plain that Matthew has followed neither the 
one nor the other. It is plain that he has merely 
availed himself of a portion of the words and the 
general structure of the sentences, as no writer could 
think of doing if he meant to point to a supernatural 
prediction accomplished. If, in such a case as this, 
the quotation could be introduced by the words, " He 
came and dwelt in Capernaum, &c, that it might be 
fulfilled" &c, how is it possible in any case to argue 
that the essential force of that expression requires the 
reader to understand it as indicating a prediction 
brought to pass % 

In the original connection of the passage, as I in- 
terpret it (see " Lectures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 195, 196), 
Isaiah had expressed the sense that the disasters ex- 
perienced by the northern tribes from the Assyrian 
inroad would not be permanent, but that the victories 
of the expected Son of David would restore to them 
freedom and prosperity. Isaiah had, it is true, referred 
to the Messiah, but to the Messiah very erroneously un- 
derstood ; nor can his words be construed as contain- 
ing any allusion to a residence of the Messiah in the 
territory of Zebulon and Naphtali. Matthew, too, 
knew much more familiarly than we, that to dwell at 
Capernaum would not be the fulfilment of a predic- 
tion of dwelling " beyond Jordan," inasmuch as Ca- 
pernaum was not on the side of the river denoted by 
the use of those words. He had no idea of represent- 
ing the residence of Jesus at Capernaum as the accom- 
plishment of a prediction. He had no idea that Isaiah 
had predicted a residence of the Messiah at that or at 
any other place. Isaiah had spoken of an illumina- 
tion of the northern territory by the dawn of a politi- 
cal deliverance. Matthew takes part of his words, 
and applies them to the appearance, in that country, 
of a light of very different nature. 



56 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 17. 

IV. 17. 

From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, " Repent, for 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 

The ideas associated by the Jews with this expres- 
sion were, as we have seen (above, pp. 46 - 48), quite 
erroneous. " They expected a new Jewish empire to 
be established on a more stable and glorious footing 
than the old. It was to be established and administered 
under heavenly protection by the Son of David, the 
Messiah. He was to be a valiant, politic, and mag- 
nificent prince, successful in his wars, and exalting his 
subjects to a temporal supremacy over the nations. 
The humble Jesus of Nazareth was no such prince. 
His office was to establish no such dominion. His 
was to be not a worldly, but a spiritual sway. Yet, 
because he came to set up a kingdom, a kingdom 
under heavenly protection, the only kingdom which 
was to be looked for, and the very authority which 
had been pointed at by Moses in words which later 
ages had misunderstood, he did not hesitate to begin 
his ministry with the declaration, ' The kingdom of 
heaven is at hand,' and to repeat the same and similar 
language through its whole course. 4 The kingdom 
of heaven ' was at hand, though in a sense different 
from what had been understood, and in one which it 
remained for him to explain." (" Lectures," &c, Vol. 
II. p. 383.) 

V. 2-10. 

And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, " Blessed 
are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteous- 
ness'' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 

Here we have the first recorded attempt of Jesus 
to disabuse his Jewish hearers of the errors which, 



V. 2-10.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 57 

through false habits of thought, they had derived from 
their Scriptures. Here he begins to explain to them 
that there was to be no such " kingdom of heaven " 
as they had been looking for, but that Heaven was 
about to establish a dominion over men, and a society 
among men, of a very different kind. 

The people, from whom Jesus had now collected an 
audience, were anxiously expecting, like their fathers 
before them, a " kingdom of heaven." They were 
right in their expectation of such a dominion, but they 
greatly misconceived its nature. The ancient sages of 
their nation, - — Isaiah, Jeremiah, Haggai, and the 
rest, — adopting, from age to age, the notions of their 
time, had greatly misconceived it. Jesus had an- 
nounced its approach to delighted ears (iv. 17, 23). 
Now he first proceeds to explain in what it would 
consist. It was to be an empire over the human soul. 
It would collect, form, and rule over a community of 
humble, meek, merciful men, men pure in heart, stu- 
dious of peace, schooled by trial, hungering and thirst- 
ing for goodness. 

Let us endeavor to place ourselves in the midst of 
that assembly to which Jesus made his first long 
address. How must the heart of every Jew have 
swelled with pride and hope to hear the announce- 
ment, that that great revolution was near which he 
expected would make Jerusalem the seat of a splendid 
empire, — the Son of David, the conqueror, the glory 
and delight of all nations, — and the meanest Israelite 
an object of the trembling veneration of subdued and 
humbled Gentiles ! How greedily must his selfishness 
have fed itself on the anticipation of a share in the 
authority and magnificence of the kingdom about to 
be established ! And, indignant as he was at the bur- 
dens, and still more at the insolence, of a Homan 



58 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [V. 2-10. 

domination, how must he have exulted in the thought 
that the time, not only for his emancipation, but for 
his revenge, was close at hand ! When multitudes 
from all the districts of the Holy Land had collected 
about him who had uttered this long and anxiously 
expected summons, and drawn the eyes of all to him 
by wonderful works of power and mercy, and when, 
as if to take advantage of their enthusiasm, and place 
himself at their head, he was seen, surrounded by his 
special attendants, to go up into a mountain, and dis- 
pose himself into an attitude to address the crowd, 
with what an intensely excited expectation must every 
bosom have throbbed ! With what a painful curiosity 
must the first words he should utter have been awaited ! 
And what must have been the surprise and disappoint- 
ment which succeeded, when those first words were 
heard : " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven " ! 

Yet, while giving such a shock to their fixed pre- 
possessions and ambitious hopes, — while revolting all 
their notions of a heavenly kingdom, drawn from the 
revered writings of " them of old time," — I think we 
may see that Jesus designed to break the force of the 
blow, by hinting that the view which he was present- 
ing was not without warrant from those same Old 
Testament Scriptures which it seemed to oppose. To 
this end, not a little of the phraseology employed by 
him on this occasion appears to have been framed. 
(For instances, comp. Matt. v. 3 with Ps. li. 17, Is. 
lxi. 1, lxvi. 2; Matt. v. 4 with Ps. cxxvi. 5, Pro v. 
xiv. 13, Eccles. ii. 2, iii. 4, Is. xxii. 12, 13, xxxv. 
10, lvii. 10, 18, lxi. 2; Matt. v. 5 with Ps. xxxvii. 11, 
lxxvi. 9, cxlix. 4, Is. lvii. 13 ; Matt. v. 6 with Ps. 
xvii. 15, xxxvii. 25, xlii. 2, lxiii. 1, Is. lv. 1, lxv. 
13 ; Matt. v. 7 with Ps. xxxvii. 25, 26, xli. 1, Pro v. 



V. 17.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 59 

xiv. 21, xix. 17; Matt. v. 8 with Ps. xxiv. 3, 4, 
lxxiii. 1, Is. xxxiii. 15, 16.) 

V. 17. 

Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the prophets ; 
I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 

A caution very necessary, after what Jesus had been 
saying of the nature of that institution which was 
about to be set up in the world, so different from that 
military and magnificent " kingdom of heaven " which 
his hearers had been expecting. In every age, he who 
explains the Scriptures in their right sense, and ex- 
hibits them in their true position, exposes himself to 
the charge of aiming to " destroy," instead of to " ful- 
fil" them. Reasoning unskilfully upon the contents 
of their sacred books, the Jews appealed to them in 
support of very pernicious errors. When Jesus an- 
nounced great truths which contradicted those errors, 
he knew that in the minds of his hearers he incurred 
a suspicion, which he repelled in the words quoted 
above. He came, he said, not, as (from the freedom 
with which he had spoken) might be supposed, to de- 
ride, relax, or annul the ancient Scriptures, but, on 
the contrary, to fulfil, to complete, to carry out their 
object. The great object of their inspired lawgiver, 
Moses, had been, to introduce into the world right 
conceptions of the character and authority of God, 
and the principles of virtuous conduct. The object of 
those wise and good (if not supernaturally inspired) 
men, the prophets, had been, in their day and gen- 
eration, to serve the same great cause of truth and 
righteousness. His aim was identical with theirs. 
His mission was to accomplish their proposed object, 
far more effectually and thoroughly than they had 
succeeded in doing, or had so much as attempted to 



60 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [V. 22. 

do (v. 18-20). He was not their opponent, but their 
more powerful co-worker, — their successor, rather, in 
a much higher sphere of the same labor, And, for 
present samples of the way in which it would be his 
office to "fulfil" the ancient teachers, by extending 
their narrow, and deepening their superficial discipline, 
he shows how his system of morality, in respect to 
the angry passions (ibid. 21-26), to the animal ap- 
petites (ibid. 27 - 30), to conjugal faith (ibid. 31, 32), 
to religious reverence (ibid. 33-37), and to the mag- 
nanimity of gentleness, the obligations of human 
brotherhood (ibid. 38-48, vii. 12), transcended and 
matured the best rules with which the devotees of the 
Law and the prophets were acquainted. 

It is obvious to remark, that, if Jesus had come to 
fulfil " the prophets " in the erroneous popular sense 
in which the Messiah was then, as now, expected to 
fulfil them, this was the time and place to declare it. 

V. 22. 

I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother with- 
out a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment : and who- 
soever shall say to his brother, " Raca," shall be in danger 
of the council : but whosoever shall say, " Thou fool," shall 
be in danger of hell-fire. 

"Hell-fire ." Literally, the gehenna of fire, or the 
fiery gehe7ina. Gehenna (<yeevva) is merely a represen- 
tation in Greek letters of two Hebrew words, signify- 
ing " the valley of Hinnom " (OStl N'*J) 5 a valley 
under Mount Zion and the southern wall of the city 
of Jerusalem. We first read of it in the Book of 
Joshua (xv. 8). In the times of the kings it became the 
scene of the idolatrous worship of Moloch. (1 Kings 
xi. 7 ; 2 Kings xvi. 3 ; 2 Chron. xxviii. 3 ; xxxiii. 6 ; 
Jer. xix. 2; xxxii. 35.) Josiah desecrated the place 



V. 22.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 61 

(2 Kings xxiii. 10, 13), after which time it became a 
receptacle for the filth of the city, and the dead bodies 
of animals and of executed malefactors were thrown 
there. The worms and other reptiles, bred in this 
putrid matter, added to the loathsome aspect of the 
place, and from time to time fires were kindled to keep 
the nuisance in check, which would smoulder as long 
as the combustible substance lasted. So its " worm 
died not," and its " fire was not quenched." 

By the judgment (fcpicns) indicated in the words 
"shall be in danger of the judgment" (v. 21), was 
indicated the local tribunal of inferior magistrates, 
seven in number, according to Josephus (" Antiq. Jud.," 
Lib. IV. cap. viii. § 14 ; comp. 2 Chron. xix. 5 - 7), 
established in each city. Our Lord, commenting upon 
the rules which he quotes, takes this "judgment" for 
the lowest term of the climax by which he illustrates 
the truth, that not only are men responsible for their 
acts, but also for their words and even their feelings, 
and that their responsibility will rise from less to 
greater in proportion to the aggravation of their of- 
fence. The "judgment" was the local magistracy. 
The " council," or Sanhedrim (avve&plov), was the au- 
gust central court at Jerusalem, composed of the high- 
priest and seventy assessors (" Antiq. Jud.," Lib. IX. 
cap. i. § 1 ; comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. I. p. 342, 
note f ; 2 Chron. xix. 8-11), and charged with the 
more important functions of judicature. The " fiery 
Gehenna " was the odious grave to which the victims 
of capital execution were consigned. Our Lord cer- 
tainly did not mean to say literally, that whoever 
should harbor a vindictive thought would be punished 
by the municipal magistrates (for how would those 
magistrates find it out]); or that he who should use 
harsh language of reproach should be dealt with by 
6 



62 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VII. 21. 

the supreme council. No more did he mean to declare, 
that he who should be carried so far by his anger as 
to insult his brother with yet more offensive taunts, 
should be condemned to the Gehenna of fire, in any 
literal sense of that phrase. He meant to announce 
that men were responsible for all their offences, of 
feeling and speech as well as action, in the measure of 
the aggravation of those offences respectively ; and 
this sentiment he clothed in figurative language, drawn 
naturally from the phraseology of that doctrine on 
which he was commenting. (Comp. Wetsten. " Nov. 
Test," Tom. I. p. 299.) 

VII. 21. 

Not every one that saith unto me, " Lord, Lord," shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven ; but he that doeth the will of my Fa- 
ther which is in heaven. 

Another step of progress in the exposition of the 
nature of the new institution about to be established 
under Divine auspices. Its subjects were not to be 
such as should merely be willing to hail Jesus as their 
commander, but such as should be disposed to devote 
themselves to a life of universal obedience to God's 
will. 

VIII. 4. 

Jesus saith unto him, " See thou tell no man ; but go thy way, 
show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift, that Moses 
commanded, for a testimony unto them." 

The Mosaic Law was not yet superseded, and Jesus 
turned the grateful feelings of the cured leper into a 
religious channel, by bidding him remember the re- 
ligious acknowledgment which that Law prescribed. 
(Lev. xiv. 1 - 32 ; comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. I. pp. 
275 - 277.) A further object probably was, that, by 
the official declaration of the priest, all doubt might 



VIII. 16, 17.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 63 

be silenced as to the reality and completeness of the 
cure ; and the direction, " See thou tell no man, but 
go thy way," was given lest the priests, hearing of the 
miracle which had been wrought, and wishing to dis- 
credit it, should be disinclined to do the leper justice, 
and declare him cleansed. The direction, " See thou 
tell no man," was perhaps further designed to guard 
against inconvenience, to which Jesus was sometimes 
exposed, from the curiosity of crowds. (Comp. Mark 
i. 45.) 

VIII. 11, 12. 

Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down 
with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of 
heaven ; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out 
into outer darkness. 

Still another step in the explanation of the nature 
of the new institution about to be introduced. Under 
the figure of admission to and exclusion from a festive 
entertainment, Jesus declares that the privileges of 
the coming kingdom are by no means to belong to 
God's anciently chosen people as such, according to 
the churlish doctrine of their bigoted nationality ; 
that not only were the despised and hated Gentiles, 
from all quarters of the world, to be invited into it on 
an equality with the revered patriarchs of their own 
race, but that even the (so esteemed) natural heirs, 
men of Jewish blood, would be denied a place if they 
brought no better title to admission than that founded 
on their ancestry. While the illuminated festivity 
was proceeding within, they would be left in the damp 
and cold darkness outside. 

VIII. 16, 17. 

He cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were 
sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias 



64 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VIII. 16, 17. 

the prophet, saying, " Himself took our infirmities, and bare 
our sicknesses." 

The sense of the Hebrew of this passage (Is liii. 4), 
as correctly rendered by Dr. Noyes, is, " He bore our 
diseases, and carried our pains." The English of the 
corresponding Septuagint Greek is, " He bears our 
sins, and is pained for us." Our translation of the 
words, in the quoted form, scarcely represents the force 
of the last verb. One of the meanings of Matthew's 
word rendered " bare " (ifiao-Tao-e) is took away, re- 
moved ; and there can be no doubt, from the connection, 
that this was the sense which Matthew had in view, 
and that he made his translation to accommodate that 
sense. The corresponding Hebrew word ( 73 D) will 
indifferently bear to have that sense put upon it, any- 
where. But even if it will, nothing can be clearer 
than that, in the connection in which it stands in the 
passage quoted from Isaiah, it has no such significa- 
tion. In short, the passage, understood agreeably to 
its context as it stands in the work from which it is 
extracted, — that is, understood in its true meaning, 
— admitted of no application of any kind to the case 
to which Matthew applies it. To make it susceptible 
of such an application, he gave a new turn to it by a 
peculiar translation ; — - a course quite unexceptionable 
if it was only rhetorical embellishment that was in- 
tended, but quite inconsistent with the supposition of 
Matthew's having intended to assert, in the words 
" that it might be fulfilled," that the writer of the 
passage quoted had a supernatural prescience of the 
proceedings of Jesus. 

Another remark very important to be made upon 
this passage is, that another Apostle (1 Pet. ii. 24) re- 
fers to the same words which are here quoted by Mat- 
thew, and uses them in a wholly different sense. If 



VIII. 20.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 65 

Matthew meant to represent them as containing a su- 
pernatural prediction of the works of healing done by 
Jesus, was he right in that interpretation, or was Peter 
right, who put them to an entirely different use % Both 
were right ; but they can only be shown to be so, by 
rejecting the preposterous common theory of quota- 
tions. Neither intended to adduce the words as con- 
taining supernatural prediction which in time had 
i)een verified. Both meant to make an accommodation 
of them, in the way of a well-authorized and familiar 
ornament of style. One made one accommodation of 
them ; the other, another. Each put the words to his 
own use ; both did it with equal propriety ; and there 
is no contradiction between them, as there would have 
been a most palpable one, if one had designed to say 
that the words in their original sense related to one 
event, and the other that they related to another. 

VIII. 20. 

The Son of man hath not where to lay his head. 

The phrase Son of man occurs not far from seventy 
times in the Gospels, being, in every instance except 
one (John xii. 34), used by Jesus respecting himself; 
and this one does not in fact constitute an exception, 
since it is merely a repetition of the words of Jesus 
by those with whom he is conversing. The text before 
us, being the first in which the title occurs, presents 
the question respecting its import. 

The phrase son of man, as used in the Old Testa- 
ment, is commonly equivalent to man simply. So it is 
used by Elihu in the Book of Job (xxxv. 8) : " Thy 
wickedness may hurt a man as thou art, and thy right- 
eousness may profit the son of man." So by the 
Psalmist (viii. 4) : " What is man, that thou art mind- 
ful of him, or the son of man, that thou visitest him % " 
6* 



66 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VIII. 20. 

(Comp. instar omnium, Pro v. viii. 4; Is. li. 12; Jer. li. 
43.) There is, however, an occasional antithesis be- 
tween two forms of the Hebrew (fc"K 03 and D*7K 03), 
both rendered literally, in English, sons of men, cor- 
responding to the distinction between the two words 
signifying man (E"N and 0"JK), in respect to the 
greater dignity implied by the former. In a Psalm 
(xlix. 2) this is expressed in our version by the words 
" low " and " high." (Comp. Ps. lxxxii. 7 ; Is. ii. 9 ; 
v. 15.) The form here rendered "high" (B*K f|) 
is very rarely found ; the other (OHN [3) occurs 
very frequently, especially in the Book of Ezekiel, 
where it is the constantly repeated form of address 
to that prophet. (See Ezek. ii. 1 ; iii. 1 ; iv. 1 ; v. 
1, &c.) 

Agreeably to this, it has been a common opinion of 
critics, that Jesus, in habitually applying the title to 
himself, intended to call himself a man, or a man in 
humble condition ; and there have been other explana- 
tions, which I pass over, such as that son of [the] man 
means son of Adam, or second Adam, or son of David, or 
second David. I regard the phrase as having, as used 
by Jesus, a more specific meaning, and as containing 
a reference to a form of conception and of speech de- 
rived from (or at least according with) a passage in 
the Book of Daniel (vii. 13, 14), where it is said, " I 
saw in the night visions, and behold, one like a [or 
the] son of man came with the clouds of heaven," &c. 
In these words the subject in the writer's contempla- 
tion was the coming of the Messiah to establish the 
kingdom of heaven. Occurring in a passage of such 
brilliancy, the phrase son of man, though by no means 
sufficiently specific in its meaning to be restricted into 
a designation of the Messiah, yet was likely to take a 
place among those titles which might properly be ap- 



VIII. 20.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 67 

plied to him. And the probability that such was our 
Lord's reference, when he used it, is greatly strength- 
ened by his allusions, in connection with it, to parts of 
the context in Daniel's prophecy. Thus to Caiaphas 
Jesus said, " Hereafter shall ye see the son of man sit- 
ting on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven." (With Daniel vii. 13, 14, comp. 
Matt. xxv. 31, 32, Luke ix. 26 ; also, Acts vii. 56, 
Apoc. xiv. 14.) 

But supposing this to be well founded, the question 
occurs, How could Jesus, from an early period of his 
ministry, use a title suitable to the office of Messiah, 
when he did not distinctly present himself even to his 
Apostles in that character, till a time not long preced- 
ing his crucifixion % I answer, that the title Son of 
man, though, for the reasons which have been pre- 
sented, suitable to be applied to the Messiah, was not 
confined to that use, was not appropriated, was not 
peculiar to the Messiah ; and therefore did not neces- 
sarily imply any pretensions, on the part of him who 
assumed it, to that character. That it admitted of 
being understood as synonymous with the title Christ, 
appears clearly from such a text as this (John xii. 34) : 
" We have heard out of the Law that Christ abideth 
for ever, and how sayest thou, * The Son of man must 
be lifted up "? " But that, on the other hand, it did 
not require to be so understood, seems to be recognized 
in the question which Jesus put to his disciples (Matt, 
xvi. 13), "Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, 
am % " leaving it undetermined what character was de- 
noted by the title. On the whole, the truth appears 
to be, that the same reasons which dictated the reserve 
maintained in other respects by Jesus, as to an assump- 
tion of the character of Messiah, till a late period of 
his ministry, made it fit that, in the selection of a title, 



68 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IX. 13. 

he should avoid such as would prematurely provoke 
the hostility of his countrymen by a too plain annun- 
ciation of his claim, while, on the other hand, it should 
be such, that, after his crucifixion, his disciples, re- 
calling his language to their minds, might see that that 
claim had, from the first to the last, been consistently, 
though not offensively, put forward. The designation 
Son of man suited both these objects, and it was the 
only one which suited them. It was a fit title of the 
Messiah ; but in Scripture and in common life it was 
familiarly used in a less definite sense. They who be- 
lieved Jesus to be that personage would understand 
him as giving an intimation to that effect, as often as 
he called himself the Son of man ; while his negligent 
or unbelieving hearers would attribute no peculiar 
force to the expression, to the seditiously disposed so 
indefinite a phrase would not sound as a fit watch- 
word of rebellion, and his adversaries, on the eager 
watch for some proof to convict him of disloyal de- 
signs, would have no pretence for founding upon it a 
charge against him. Possibly the title may have been 
further recommended to his use, as being the most 
modest and humble among those open to his election. 

IX. 13. 

Go ye and learn what that meaneth, " I will have mercy, and 
not sacrifice." 

Hosea (vi. 6) had in the words here quoted repre- 
sented Jehovah as declaring his preference of humane 
dispositions over ritual observances. Jesus presents 
that sound principle, as announced in the authoritative 
words of the prophet, to the consideration of those 
Pharisees who had cavilled at his benevolent concern 
for publicans and sinners. I submit that we should 
understand Jesus as conveying a rebuke to the Phari- 



X. 25.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. ' 69 

sees, as well as justifying himself. As to the self- 
justification, that benevolence which had prompted his 
intercourse with men whom others despised, was de- 
clared, in the text quoted, to be approved by God above 
external worship. As to the rebuke of the Pharisees, 
it is as if he had said : When you come to understand 
the force of Hosea's words, you will see that, attentive 
as you are to " sacrifice," your censorious question con- 
victs you of failure in that " mercy " which in God's 
sight is better. 

X. 15. 

It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Go- 
morrah in the day of judgment, than for that city. 

The use of a proverbial expression like this cannot 
be considered as any voucher for the truth of the an- 
cient relations (Gen. xviii. 20, xix. 24) of the guilt 
and destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. When I 
say that a place is " as dark as Erebus," I do not mean 
to answer for the existence of Erebus. 

X. 23. 

Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son 
of man be come. 

This text, I think, confirms beyond reasonable ques- 
tion the account given above (see pp. 65 - 68) of the 
origin and import of the title, Son of man. I suppose 
this expression of his coming cannot be well explained 
on any other hypothesis. What is meant by the com- 
ing of the Messiah, I shall endeavor to show hereafter. 
(See below, pp. £8-91.) 

X. 25. 

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub. 

A name of vague but fierce reproach, which the 



70 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [X. 35, 36. 

Jews borrowed from an idol of the Philistines. (Comp. 
2 Kings i. 2, 16.) 

X. 35, 36. 

I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and 
the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law 
against her mother-in-law, and a man's foes shall be they of 
his own household. 

In declaring what he foresaw as an immediate con- 
sequence of the introduction of his Gospel, Jesus 
availed himself of words of the prophet Micah (vii. 
6), originally used by that writer in a connection and 
sense altogether different. The turn of phrase in 
which he announces the effect, not the design, of his 
preaching, (" I am come to set a man at variance," &c.,) 
illustrates the import of such forms of language, as 
explained above. (See pp. 26 - 28.) 

XI. 2-6. 

When John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he 
sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, " Art thou he 
that should come, or do we look for another ? " Jesus an- 
swered and said unto them, " Go and show John again those 
things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their 
sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the 
deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the 
Gospel preached to them ; and blessed is he whosoever shall 
not be offended in me." 

That Jesus was " he that should come " (comp. John 
vi. 14), John had already the fullest assurance (John i. 
29-34). His message to Jesus was not one of in- 
quiry, but of remonstrance. Respecting the character 
and office of him " that should come," John shared in 
the erroneous views of his countrymen, views from 
which even the daily companions of Jesus had not yet 
escaped. He heard of " the works of Christ" and he 



XI. 2-6.] GOSPEL OE MATTHEW. 71 

argued from them that Jesus was intending presently 
to assume the magnificence and power which belonged 
to that exalted dignity. He heard of them " in the 
prison," from which he regarded them as a promise of 
speedy release for himself, as one of the triumphant 
Messiah's friends. But no Messiah was yet manifested 
in his overpowering greatness. The prison doors of 
John were not yet thrown open. And he became im- 
patient, perplexed, scandalized, as Jesus himself im- 
plies (Matt. xi. 6). His message I consider as equiva- 
lent to this : Being the Messiah, as you are, how is it 
that you do not forthwith assert your prerogatives and 
protect your suffering friends % how is it that you so 
conduct yourself as might tempt one to think that 
after all the Messiah is not yet born % 

Jesus did not give a categorical answer. He could not 
give such an answer to the messengers of John, without 
casting off that reserve, as to a proclamation of himself 
in the character of the Messiah, to which he adhered 
nearly down to the time of his last journey to Jeru- 
salem. His reply was, in effect : Observe these mira- 
cles of mine, and report them to John ; and then let 
John and his disciples judge for themselves who I am, 
and whether I can be trusted to mark out my own 
course, without prompting or animadversion from him. 
If I do not yet testify of myself, these mighty works 
which I am doing testify of me. If I do not yet pro- 
claim what character I bear, let John judge, when he 
hears of them, whether it is fear, or want of power, 
that restrains me. Let him consider whether they do 
not show me competent to determine on my own 
method of proceeding, and whether he will not do 
well to be more modest and patient, and to cease being 
" offended in me." 

Expressions in the reply of Jesus to John's disci- 



72 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XL 10. 

pies have a certain similarity to what occur in different 
passages of the Book of Isaiah (xxxv. 5, 6, xlii. 7, 
lxi. 1), where the subject is the return of the people 
from captivity. (Comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. III. 
pp. 230, 242, 267.) But the language of Jesus needs 
no other explanation, than that it was naturally and 
properly descriptive of his deeds ; nor do I think it 
by any means clear, that he was in any way referring 
to those passages. If there was such a reference, it 
was only in the way of a combination of words, which 
naturally arose in the memory from familiarity with 
the language of old Scripture, or at most was an ac- 
commodation, of the kind of which we have already 
seen several instances, of words that had been used 
by a well-known writer in one sense, to another sense 
in which they might be correctly applied. 

XL 10. 

This is he of whom it is written, " Behold, I send my messen- 
ger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before 
thee." 

These words are quoted (not exactly, but with ad- 
ditions and changes) from the prophecy of Malachi 
(iii. 1 ; comp. "Lectures," &c., Vol. III. p. 501). It 
is quite remarkable that those Christian expositors 
who are the most earnest for the theory of the super- 
natural foreknowledge of the Jewish prophets are in 
the habit of interpreting this passage as a prediction 
by Malachi of Jesus himself, as the " messenger of the 
covenant," and not as a prediction of John, his fore- 
runner, though the latter is what the language of 
Jesus, if taken with the literalness usually contended 
for, would declare it to be. I think it is plain enough 
that Malachi, when he used the words, had in view the 
expected Messiah, according to that conception which 



XL 13.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 73 

was current in his time, and that Jesus applied the 
words to John in the same way of accommodation, in 
which Matthew, using almost the same form of intro- 
duction (" This is he that was spoken of," Matt. iii. 3), 
had applied to John certain words of Isaiah, which in 
their original sense had no relation to him. (See ahove, 
p. 48.) John was a messenger, sent to prepare the 
Lord's way, and, so far, words originally used as descrip- 
tive of the Messiah were applicable to John. I here 
repeat the remark, for it is of leading importance, that, 
had the intention been to refer, in the text quoted, to 
supernatural prediction fulfilled, the quotation would 
have been made with exactness, instead of with the 
variations which we actually find. Otherwise, the 
standard of comparison of the event with the predic- 
tion would be wanting. 

XI. 13. 

All the prophets and the Law prophesied until John. 

I pause upon this text, in order to ask attention to 
a necessary remark on the meaning of the word 
prophesy {irpo^Tevetv) in the New Testament. It some- 
times means simply to look fonvard, to contemplate the 
future, without at all involving the idea of the fore- 
sight in question being of a supernatural kind. In 
this sense, I may be said with perfect propriety to 
prophesy that it will be fair or foul weather to-morrow, 
when I have no other knowledge on the subject than 
any one may have from observing the temperature of 
the air, and the face of the sky. So Cicero said 
(" Epist. ad Divers.," Lib. VI. Epist. 6) : " Nothing 
unfortunate happened in that war, without my having 
predicted it" (non prsedicente me) ; and again ("De 
Senectute," § 14), " How did it delight Gallus to pre- 
dict (praedicere) eclipses of the sun and moon ! " I 

7 



74 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XL 14. 

understand our Lord here to say: As the divinely 
revealed Law of Moses had reference to that better 
institution, the future kingdom of heaven, so the 
wise men who lived and wrote under it, with whatever 
intermingled errors, also constantly contemplated that 
great coming revolution in human affairs. The time 
for looking forward to the kingdom of heaven is now 
at an end. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, and 
John has been its forerunner. 

XL 14. 

If ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come. 

If this declaration of Jesus were all our informa- 
tion upon the subject, those interpreters who have for 
the most part been the guides of Christians would 
have insisted that there had been a metempsychosis, 
by which Elijah had reappeared in the person of John 
the Baptist. From that conclusion we are saved by 
John's own recorded declaration : " They asked him, 
4 What then % art thou Elias ] ' and he saith, ' I am 
not.' " (John i. 21.) Jesus refers in the text before us 
to an opinion entertained by his countrymen. Whether 
Malachi himself supposed or not that there would be 
a personal appearance of Elijah preceding that of the 
Messiah, when he represented Jehovah as saying 
(iv. 5), " Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet," 
&c, it was thus that the Jews understood him, and on 
those words of his they grounded their own expecta- 
tion of such an apparition. Jesus tells them that 
John was the only Elijah that was to come ; in other 
words, that no Elijah at all was to come, but that John 
was to him what they erroneously supposed that Eli- 
jah would be to the Messiah. " If ye will receive it," 
said he, according to our English translation. He ap- 
proached them with great caution, to contradict one 



XII. 3, 4.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 75 

out of the endless variety of their mistakes drawn 
from their dull and superstitious views of the Old 
Testament. If they had been prepared to " receive 
it," if they had been " able to bear it " (comp. John 
xvi. 12 ; 1 Cor. iii. 2), if their minds had been in such 
a state that he could have instructed them further con- 
cerning their Scriptures without altogether repelling 
them, it may be presumed that he would have refuted 
many of those errors which have been transmitted 
from those Jewish triflers to our day, to be the distress, 
the hinderance, and the shame of Christians. 

Or we may change the pronoun supplied in the ver- 
sion, and render the words, " If ye will receive him." 
In this case they will import, If ye wish to receive 
Elijah, if ye wish to welcome the Messiah's forerunner 
whom ye look for, recognize that forerunner in John ; 
no other will you see. 

XI. 23. 

If the mighty works which have been done in thee had been 
done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 

I have indicated what I understand by references 
of this kind. (Comp. p. 69.) When I say that one or 
another is not the person to bend the bow of Ulysses 
or solve the riddle of the Sphinx, I do not expect to 
make myself answerable for the truth of the fables of 
Homer and Sophocles. 

XII. 3, 4. 

He said unto them, "Have ye not read what David did when 
he was an hungred, and they that were with him ; how he 
entered into the house of God, and did eat the shew-bread, 
which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which 
were with him, but only for the priests? " 

I call attention to this passage, merely as containing 
a clear instance of an argumentum ad hominem, and 



76 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XII. 7. 

showing that this was a kind of argument which Je- 
sus did in fact use. Taking the question raised by 
the Jews as an abstract question of religion and mo- 
rality, Jesus might have justified his disciples on much 
higher grounds than that of David's example. (Comp. 
1 Sam. xxi. 1 - 6.) He did not need the example of 
David for his or their justification. The argument 
which he used was only suitable to silence cavil, and 
to that end it was eminently suitable. If Jesus might 
properly use such a line of argument in this case, 
so he might in others ; as we shall see that he ac- 
tually did. 

XII. 7. 

If ye had known what this meaneth, " I will have mercy, and 
not sacrifice," ye would not have condemned the guiltless. 

See above, p. 68. The application which Jesus 
appears here to make of the quotation is this : Those 
whom you accuse do no more than transgress against 
the ritual ; you, who condemn those guiltless persons, 
sin against mercy, which Hosea, in so many words, 
places above the ritual. 

XII. 17. 

That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by [or in] Esaias 
the prophet. 

I suppose Isaiah not to have been the author of the 
passage quoted ("Lectures," &c., Vol. III. pp. 237, 
238); a fact which I esteem to be perfectly consistent 
with the use of his name in such a reference as is here 
made. (See " Lectures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 235, 236 ; 
Vol. IV. pp. 258, 259, 414.) 



XII. 18-21.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 77 

XII. 18-21. 

Behold my servant, whom I have chosen ; my beloved, in whom 
my soul is well pleased : I will put my spirit upon him, and 
he shall show judgment to the Gentiles ; he shall not strive, 
nor cry ; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. 
A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he 
not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in 
his name shall the Gentiles trust. 

This quotation from the prophecy of Isaiah (xlii. 
1-4) accords precisely with neither the Hebrew nor 
the Septuagint. It differs from both in omitting two 
clauses before the last clause of the original, and in 
substituting the words " beloved " and " victory" (Matt, 
xii. 18, 20) for " elect" and " truth" (Is. xlii. 3). With 
the Septuagint it differs from the Hebrew in reading 
" his name " instead of " his law " in the last clause. 
(Comp. Is. xlii. 4 with Matt. xii. 21.) And with the 
Hebrew it differs from the Septuagint in the first of 
the verses quoted, where the latter reads, " Jacob, my 
servant, I will uphold him, Israel, my chosen, my soul 
hath adopted him." 

The Septuagint translators here allowed themselves 
in too free a rendering ; but I conceive that they had 
a right apprehension of the purport of the passage. 
I think that the context clearly shows the original 
writer (as those translators understood him) to have 
here intended by the titles " my servant " and " my 
chosen," not the expected Messiah, but the chosen 
people of Israel. (See " Lectures," &c., Vol. III. p. 
241.) In a sense different from the original sense, 
parts of the passage are applicable to the office, and 
part to the temporary forbearance and reserve, of 
Jesus ; and to these, accordingly, Matthew makes a 
graceful application of them, never dreaming that he 
should come to be understood as declaring that an 
7* 



78 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XII. 32. 

ancient writer had intended to describe a particular 
feature of Christ's conduct, and that in words suited 
to describe it at best very vaguely. 

XII. 32. 

Neither in this world, neither in the world to come. 

World I take to be an altogether erroneous trans- 
lation of the Greek word (alcov) which it here repre- 
sents. For want of a better English representative, 
that word may be rendered time, or age, or period. 
But its meaning, in Jewish use, is specific. The word 
dispensation, not at all its equivalent etymologically, 
is in signification, for the most part, convertible with 
it. In the Jewish acceptation, if I understand it, 
the present age (o alcov ovro<;, Jljft D/I^n) means the 
time antecedent to the expected Messiah's advent, and 
the future age (o altov fxeWwv, N3I7 D/iJ^il) means 
the coming time (the time which, till the Christian 
era, was future) of the Messiah's reign. These two 
periods, that which was passing, and that which was to 
come, comprehended all time but what was past ; and 
accordingly, to say, in this sense, " Neither in this age, 
neither in the age to come," was the same as to say, 
" Never, at any time." The time embraced in the two 
periods they called " the ages " (ol alwves), or " the 
times of the ages " {^povoi alavLoi). The time preced- 
ing both periods was " the time before the ages " (irpo 
tow alcovcov, or irpo ^povcov amviwv) ; or the latter form 
(xpovoc alwvioi, quasi " the dispensation times ") may de- 
note the times of the^ Jewish dispensation. (By its 
etymology, the word D^ijf, derived from D7j£, he con- 
cealed^ appears to denote an unascertained , indefinite 
time. The primitive meaning of alwv, in classical 
Greek, is a space, or period of time. See Liddell and 
Scott's Lexicon, ad verb. For its Scriptural use, and 



XII. 40, 41.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 79 

that of its derivatives, as above defined, observe the 
connections in which they occur in Tob. xiv. 5 ; Acts 
iii. 21; Rom. xvi. 25; 1 Cor. ii. 7, x. 11; Eph. iii. 
9, 11 ; Col. i. 26; 2 Tim. i. 9; Tit. i. 2; Heb. ix. 26. 
And for further illustration of the phrases see Bret- 
schneider, " Lex. N. T." in voc. alwv (§ 3) ; Schottgen. 
" Dissert. II. De Sec. Hoc et Fut." in " Hor. Hebraic," 
&c, Vol. I. pp. 1153-1158; Buxtorf. "Lex. Chal- 
daic, Talmudic, et Rabbinic." ad voc. ; Bertholdt's 
" Christologia," §11; Koppe, "Nov. Test.," Tom. 
VI. pp. 138 etseq.) 

XII. 38. 

Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, 
saying, " Master, we would see a sign from thee." 

" A sign from heaven," as it is elsewhere more fully 
expressed (Matt. xvi. 1 ; Mark viii. 11 ; Luke xi. 16), 
was what the Jews of our Lord's time had fixed in 
their minds as that proof of his claim which the Messi- 
ah ought to exhibit ; just as they read that Moses, the 
giver of the Law, had shown a " sign from heaven " 
in the supply of manna (Exod. xvi. 15 ; comp. John 
vi. 30, 31), and Elijah, the restorer of the Law, in the 
fire that consumed his sacrifice (1 Kings xviii. 38), 
and that protected him when assailed (2 Kings i. 10, 
12 ; comp. Luke ix. 54). In the Book of Daniel, too, 
the Son of man was represented (vii. 13 ; comp. Matt. 
xxiv. 3, 30) as coming " with the clouds of heaven." 

XII. 40, 41. 

As Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, 
so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in 
the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in 
judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it ; because 
they repented at the preaching of Jonas, and, behold, a greater 
than Jonas is here. 



80 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIII. 13-15. 

I have argued (" Lectures," &c., Vol. III. pp. 464 - 
474) that the Book of Jonah contains a fictitious his- 
tory. In opposition to this view of it, " some stress has 
been laid upon our Lord's illustration of his entomb- 
ment during three days, by the confinement of Jonah 
in the fish's body. Would Jesus, it is asked, have 
made such a reference to what was not a real event ? 
I ask, in return, Why not'? Who will maintain in 
terms any such principle of interpretation as what 
that argument rests upon ] Who will pretend that, 
consistently with all the uses of language, illustrations 
may not be, and are not constantly, drawn from well- 
known fictions, just as from well-known facts? If, 
even in the solemnity of pulpit discourse, a speaker 
should exhort his audience to copy the kindness of 
the Good Samaritan, or to avoid the reckless courses of 
the Prodigal Son, would any one have a right to argue 
that he considered what was on record of the Good 
Samaritan and the Prodigal Son as historically true % 
Jesus bade his hearers imitate the Good Samaritan 
(Luke x. 37 ; comp. xviii. 6) in language quite as 
strong as that in which he compared his three days' 
burial to Jonah's." (" Lectures," &c., Vol. III. 
p. 473.) 

XIII. 13-15. 

They seeing, see not ; and hearing, they hear not ; neither do 
they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of 
Esaias, which saith, " By hearing ye shall hear, and shall 
not understand ; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not per- 
ceive ; for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears 
are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed ; lest at 
any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their 
ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be 
converted, and I should heal them." 

" In them is fulfilled." For specimens of this and 



XIII. 34,35.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 81 

similar forms of introducing a quotation in the way of 
accommodation, see above, pp. 28 et seq. 

The following version of Dr. Noyes represents the 
Hebrew original of the passage here quoted from 
Isaiah (vi. 9, 10): — 

" Pie [Jehovah] said, 
' Go, and say thou to this people, 
Hear ye indeed, but understand not, 
See ye indeed, but perceive not; 
Make the heart of this people gross ; 
Make their ears dull, and blind their eyes ; 
That they may not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, 
Nor perceive with their hearts, and turn and be healed.' " 

Judging from the connection in which they stand 
in the Book of Isaiah (see " Lectures," &c., Vol. III. 
p. 188), these words are in no possible sense a predic- 
tion of the state of mind of those hearers to whom 
the Messiah would address himself. They relate 
solely to Isaiah and his contemporaries. But the 
dulness and obduracy of the hearers of Jesus resem- 
bled the stupidity of the contemporaries of Isaiah. 
Couched in the phrases of an old prophet, the rebuke 
of them would fall with the more solemnity and force. 
Jesus naturally avails himself of that resource for 
impression. He says that the reproof uttered ages 
ago is fulfilled, — that the description implied in it is 
met, — in the inattentive Jews before him. His words, 
as Matthew reports them, are almost precisely those of 
the Septuagint version, which gives the passage in a 
form better adapted than the Hebrew to the use dic- 
tated by the occasion. 

XIII. 34, 35. 

All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables, and 
without a parable spake he not unto them ; that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, " I will 



82 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIII. 34, 35. 

open my mouth in parables, I will utter things which have 
been kept secret from the foundation of the world." 

The introduction to the words quoted is here in 
form very precise. Jesus addressed the multitudes in 
parables, that it might he fulfilled which was spoken 
by an ancient writer when he said : " I will open my 
mouth in parables," &c. If the accomplishment of 
supernatural prediction is in any case to be inferred 
from the mere force of such language, it would seem 
that it must be inferred in the present instance. If, 
in the present instance, other considerations forbid us 
to draw that argument from it, then of course we 
must give up the idea of founding it, in any instance, 
upon such forms of introducing a quotation. 

Jesus quotes certain words, declaring their author's 
intention to " open his mouth in parables." He calls 
their author a prophet. And he says that his own 
speaking " in parables " fulfilled the prophet's words. — 
In what sense ] 

We look for the passage quoted, and we find it in 
one of the Psalms (lxxviii. 2). Very clearly that 
Psalm consists not at all of prediction, but, from first 
to last, of history. The writer says that he means to 
" utter dark sayings of old," and he proceeds with a 
recapitulation of the principal events in the Jewish 
annals, from the Exodus to the age of David. He 
does not at all appear as a prophet, in the sense in 
which that word is now commonly understood by 
readers of Scripture. He was a " prophet " in the 
wider sense, the true Scriptural sense, which I have 
explained elsewhere (" Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 
368-371). He was a prophet, in the sense of being 
an instructor of the people. As the writer of this 
Psalm, he was a prophet, in the sense of being a poet. 

Jesus taught in parables, and this he called a ful- 



XV. 4.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 83 

filment of the Psalmist's declaration of his own pur- 
pose to " open his mouth in parables." But the word 
which the Psalmist actually used (7^9) is of a much 
broader sense than parable. It means apothegm, prov- 
erb, and poem, as much as parable. " I will open my 
mouth in & poem" is Dr. Noyes's correct translation of 
the clause ; and, in fact, throughout the Psalm, there 
is not a single instance of that particular form of com- 
position, the parable, which Matthew reports Jesus to 
have repeatedly resorted to on this occasion, and which 
he illustrates our Lord's use of by the language quoted 
from the Psalmist. Who does not see that this is 
simply rhetorical accommodation % that it would be 
merely preposterous to interpret Matthew as produ- 
cing the Psalmist's words for prediction, and declaring 
them to be in that sense fulfilled % But if it be im- 
possible to take that view in the present instance, 
where the quotation is introduced in terms so strong 
and explicit, how is it possible in any case to found 
that argument on the strength of such terms alone % 

XIII. 43. 

Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom 
of their Father. 

I think it probable that Jesus here had in mind lan- 
guage of the Book of Daniel (xii. 3), and used it in 
accommodation to his present purpose. 

XV. 4. 

God commanded, saying, " Honor thy father and mother." 

The reference is to the fifth commandment (Exod. 
xx. 12), which is declared to have proceeded from 
God, affirming, so far, the divine origin of the Law of 
Moses. 



84 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XV. 7 - 9. 

XV. 7-9. 

Well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, " This people honor- 
eth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me ; but in 
vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the com- 
mandments of men." 

This is the rebuke of Jesus to certain " Scribes and 
Pharisees, who were of Jerusalem" (Matt. xv. 1). 
The passage referred to by him is from the prophecy 
of Isaiah (xxix. 13). And it is worthy of remark, that 
though the representation of Isaiah, literally taken, 
would make it to be God that prophesied, Jesus says, 
" Well did Esaias prophesy of you." This is dis- 
tinct confirmation, on our Lord's own authority, of 
the explanation which I have given elsewhere of that 
form of representation, by which the prophets exhibit 
Jehovah as speaking. (See " Lectures," &c, Vol. II. 
pp. 391,415-417.) 

" Therefore saith the Lord : 
' Since this people draweth near to me with their mouth, 
And honoreth me with their lips, 
While their heart is far from me, 
And their worship of me is according to the commandments of men.' " 

It is plain that Isaiah had not here in view the con- 
temporaries of Jesus. He was not " prophesying " at 
all in the sense of predicting. In the use of a well- 
authorized device of poetry, he was rebuking his own 
contemporaries by putting reproofs of them into the 
mouth of Jehovah. (See " Lectures," &c, Vol. III. 
p. 222.) Our Lord adopts his language, with omis- 
sions and alterations, and tells the hypocrites whom 
he is addressing, that of them Isaiah " prophesied " 
when he used it ; — meaning clearly this, and no more, 
that to them might be justly applied that writer's re- 
proachful comment on the dishonest pretenders of his 
own time. The words used by Jesus more nearly re- 



XVI. 13, 14.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 85 

semble the Septuagint version than the Hebrew ; but 
that circumstance in the present instance is imma- 
terial. 

XVI. 1. 

The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting, 
desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven. 

In all their vagaries of opinion respecting their ex- 
pected Messiah, the Jews had never entirely lost sight 
of the original prediction of Moses concerning him, 
that he should be " a prophet like unto himself." And 
one particular of this likeness to Moses which they 
expected to see was his exhibiting some " sign from 
heaven," as they understood Moses to have done in the 
supplies of manna (Exod. xvi. 4), at the giving of the 
Law (ibid. xix. 18), at the manifestation to the elders 
(ibid. xxiv. 9, 10), and at the consecration of the tab- 
ernacle (ibid. xl. 34). 

XVI. 4. 

The sign of the prophet Jonas. 

See above, p. 80. 

XVI. 13, 14. 

When Jesus came into the coasts of Cesarea Philippi, he asked 
his disciples, saying, " Whom do men say that I, the Son of 
man, am ? " And they said, " Some say that thou art John 
the Baptist ; some, Elias ; and others, Jeremias, or one of 
the prophets." 

Partly through a natural impulse of the imagination, 
seeking to connect every circumstance of sacredness 
and magnificence with the Messiah's advent, — partly 
on the ground of intimations, worse or better under- 
stood, in their old Scriptures, — the opinion prevailed 
among the Jews at the time of Jesus, that one or more 
8 



86 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVI. 16. 

of the ancient prophets would reappear as the Mes- 
siah's precursor. Malachi had said (iv. 5 ; comp. 
Ecclus. xlviii. 10) that Jehovah would send " Elijah 
the prophet before the coming of the great and dread- 
ful day of the Lord " ; and this statement they had not 
only adopted literally, but had proceeded to improve 
upon it in their usual style of embellishment. (See 
Bertholdt, " Christolog. Jud.," § 15.) It was related 
in the Second Book of Maccabees (ii. 1 - 8 ; comp. xv. 
13-16), that, upon the demolition of the temple by 
the Babylonians, Jeremiah had conveyed away and 
buried " the tabernacle, and the ark, and the altar of 
incense " ; and the expectation was, that, as prepara- 
tory to the Messiah's reign, he would reappear to bring 
them to light. From a text in the Book of Isaiah 
(lii. 7) which speaks of "him (1.) that publisheth 
peace, (2.) that bringeth good tidings of good, (3.) that 
publisheth salvation," it seems to have been inferred 
by some punctilious interpreters, that the Messiah's 
government would have three heralds ; and from an 
intimation in the more recent Second Book of Esdras 
(ii. 18), it is probable that Isaiah himself was expected 
to be one of them. 

XVI. 16. 

And Simon Peter answered and said, " Thon art the Christ, the 
Son of the living God." And Jesus answered and said unto 
him, " Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona." 

To us Jesus is properly the Christ in Peter's later 
sense of being " anointed with the Holy Ghost and with 
power " (Acts x. 38). But in the minds of the Jews, 
and in that of Peter among the rest, at this time, the 
word Christ stood for an idea to which the true char- 
acter and office of Jesus, the spiritual Saviour of 
men, did not correspond. Yet Jesus, by approving 



XVI. 16] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 87 

the declaration of Peter, avowed himself to be the 
Christ. 

The case here was the same as that of " the king- 
dom of heaven." The true kingdom of heaven had 
come, though those who had expected it had misun- 
derstood its nature, and Jesus had a hard task to set 
them right. So the expected benefactor had come, 
though those who expected him had misconceived his 
character. Erroneously as they had thought of him, 
" still it was of the illustrious individual in whom, the 
patriarchs had been told, all nations of the earth should 
be blessed, — of the prophet like unto himself, whom 
Moses had foretold, — that they intended to speak. 
Him, and no other, they had in their minds, however 
imperfectly or incorrectly they apprehended him ; and 
that person, and no other, Jesus was. As in the former 
case, relating to his institution, so in the latter, relating 
to himself, there was perfect propriety in his assertion 
that what God had been expected to send was at length 
sent, though in both cases the expectations which had 

been entertained needed to be rectified The Later 

Prophets spoke of a great personage to come under a 
divine patronage, and, among his other offices, they 
described him as destined to extend the knowledge of 
God, and advance the well-being of men ; and so far 
they were right. Their imaginations had wrongly de- 
picted him as accomplishing these objects by the arts 
of war and polity ; but this circumstance by no means 
precluded the propriety of our Lord's declaring him- 
self to be the person whom, however mistaken in their 
description, they had in good faith intended to de- 
scribe." (" Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 382 - 384 ; 
comp. Vol. IV. pp. 276 - 278.) 

That, through all the blinding prejudices of his own 
times, sustained and consecrated as they were by the 



88 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVI. 21, 22. 

erroneous representations of ancient venerated teachers 
of the nation, Peter should have been able to see, in 
the lowly Jesus, the prophet like unto himself of whom 
Moses had spoken, was something to call for the burst 
of commendation with which Jesus immediately ad- 
dressed him. " Flesh and blood " had not revealed to 
him the truth which he proclaimed. The teachings 
of flesh and blood in former ages, as well as in the 
present, from the pen of David and Isaiah, no less 
than from the lips of Scribes and Pharisees, had been 
of a different tenor. It was no less than God's own 
inspiration that had enlightened him to see through 
the mists that had been raised to hide the great idea. 

XVI. 21, 22. 

From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples 
how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things 
of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, 
and be raised again the third day ; then Peter took him, and 
began to rebuke him, saying, " Be it far from thee, Lord : 
this shall not be unto thee." 

When Peter was thus horrified by the information 
that Jesus was to suffer and die, Jesus had just avowed 
himself to be the Messiah (Matt. xvi. 17). It seems 
to follow indubitably, that Peter did not, with modern 
commentators, regard the language of Isaiah's prophecy 
(Hi. 13 -liii. 12) as an authorized prediction of a suf- 
fering and dying Messiah. 

XVI. 27, 28. 

The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with 
his angels, and then shall he reward every man according to 
his works ; verily I say unto you, there be some standing 
here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of 
man coming in his kingdom. 

This imagery I take to be derived from the Book of 



XVI. 27, 28.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 89 

Daniel (vii. 13, 14); or rather from the popular phrase- 
ology of the time, into which the Book of Daniel may 
have originally introduced it, though it is quite as 
likely that that book itself only adopted language 
already in currency. It was necessary that Jesus, to 
be understood by those to whom he offered his revela- 
tion, should address them in forms of speech to which 
they were accustomed. Without announcing himself 
on this occasion as the Messiah, which he was not as 
yet prepared to do, he tells them, in the context, that 
the kingdom, which, agreeably to their expectation, was 
about to be set up by the Son of man, was to be, differ- 
ently from their expectation, simply a moral govern- 
ment ; that, instead of offering indulgence to ambition 
and luxury, it would be of a nature to impose the se- 
verest self-denials, and the most unreserved self-sacri- 
fice ; and that, from the time of its establishment in 
the world, God would dispense retribution to men ac- 
cording to their works, and to nothing else. It would 
not be descent from Abraham, as they thought, — it 
would not be ceremonial observances, — that would 
gain God's favor in the kingdom of his Son. The 
times of past ignorance he overlooked (Acts xvii. 30). 
But now the principles of a strict moral administra- 
tion were to be made known to men, and by those 
principles all to whom the knowledge of them should 
come were to control themselves, and to be disposed 
of by their Heavenly Judge. Such would be the king- 
dom in which the Son of man would come, the king- 
dom which the Son of man would found. 

And, he adds, " there be some standing here which 
shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man 
coming in his kingdom." There is a vague sense in 
which the Son of man may be said to have come, the 
kingdom of God to be set up, in the world, from the 
8* 



90 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XYI. 27, 28. 

time that Jesus began to preach. But evidently there 
is some stricter designation of time that is meant when 
it is said that some of his present audience shall see 
the Messiah's kingdom coming. To what point of 
time does this language refer % 

In my opinion, to the time of the destruction of the 
temple of Jerusalem. Such is the sense which we 
seem obliged to gather from the connection of the 
phrase in several other contexts, and such is the sense 
often put upon the phrase by the commentators, though 
I have not met with any satisfactory attempt to show 
the propriety of this application of it, — or, in other 
words, to show the identity or affinity between the two 
ideas of the coming of the Son of man, on the one 
hand, and the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, 
on the other. 

The case I take to have been this : Judaism was to 
be superseded by Christianity ; the religion of Moses 
by the religion of Jesus. The substitution of the 
Gospel for the Law was the establishment of " the 
kingdom of heaven," the " coming of the Son of man." 
The introduction of the Gospel was gradual. It began 
when " Jesus began to preach," and it was continued 
step by step with the labors of his Apostles. Still, 
there was one definite time to be regarded as that when 
Judaism was withdrawn and brought to an end, and 
Christianity took its place ; and this I take to have 
been the precise point of time when the legal sacrifices 
finally ceased to be offered at the temple of Jerusalem, 
that is, when that edifice was demolished by the Ro- 
mans. Judaism was then no more, for the ritual then 
abolished was essential to it. Judaism from that mo- 
ment existed no longer, to obstruct, by the stupidity 
and violence of its blind votaries, the progress of that 
better faith for which it had been designed to prepare 



XVII. 2, 3.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 91 

the way. From that moment, the kingdom of heaven 
had come, though as yet only entering on its triumphs. 
At that moment, Judaism being " taken out of the way" 
(2 Thess. ii. 7), the Gospel being installed in its place 
as God's method of religious administration, the Son 
of man came in his kingdom. Some, standing in 
Jesus's presence at the time of the discourse now com- 
mented on, may well have seen that coming of his 
before they tasted of death, for it took place less than 
forty years after. 

XVII. 2, 3. 

And his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as 
the light ; and behold, there appeared unto them Moses and 
Elias, talking with him. 

To understand the phenomenon called the Trans- 
figuration, it is necessary to observe the position of 
Jesus and his Apostles at the time of its occurrence. 
The Apostles had been attracted to Jesus by his mira- 
cles, and had come to indulge the hope that he would 
prove to be the magnificent prince and soldier for 
whom their nation had been looking. The longer 
they had been associated with him, the more confident 
grew that hope, till at length the impetuous Peter, in 
reply to his Master's inquiry as to the character which 
he was reputed to bear, announced his own persuasion 
that verily Jesus was the Messiah (xvi. 16). Jesus 
accepted the title, but immediately followed the avow- 
al with what appeared the most extraordinary contra- 
diction of it. Instead of declaring himself destined 
to the height of earthly glory, which the Messiah's 
dignity was thought by his disciples to imply, he de- 
clared that rejection, suffering, and death were to be 
his lot (21) ; and that his followers must prepare them- 
selves for self-denial and martyrdom, and not for the 
honors of empire (24, 25). 



92 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVII. 2, 3. 

The declaration was to the last degree perplexing 
and dispiriting to them. They needed to have their 
minds cleared, enlightened, and reassured. The glori- 
ous associations which in their minds had hitherto 
gathered about the idea of the Messiah being now 
violently withdrawn, another class of honorable asso- 
ciations, and one which corresponded to the truth, 
needed to be introduced to fill up the void. If their 
conception of the Messiah had been a correct one, it 
might have been fit that it should be confirmed and 
exalted by some vision of Jesus in the company of the 
captains and kings of old Jewish story, — of Joshua 
and David. As it was, to exhibit him, in visionary 
representation, in company with Moses, the giver, and 
Elijah, the restorer of the Law (xvii. 3), was to re- 
invest him with associations which were at once of a 
dignified character, and a character suitable to his true 
office of a religious teacher ', which Moses and Elijah 
had been. The luminous appearance of his face and 
form (xvii. 2) appears to have been intended to liken 
him to Moses, whose " face shone " when he came down 
from the mountain where he had received the Law 
(Exod. xxxiv. 29 - 35). 

Does the text declare that Moses and Elias, dead 
many centuries before, now actually descended to the 
earth, and in bodily presence conversed with Jesus ? 
Such is the common opinion, and it is thought that 
the object of their communication was to prepare and 
encourage him for his future labors and sufferings. 
But I do not view the transaction in this light. As I 
regard it, it was not Jesus that needed illumination 
and excitement at this time, but his disciples, whom 
he had just astonished and distressed by his contradic- 
tion of their expectations concerning the Messiah. It 
was fit that they should be instructed and re-awakened 



XVII. 5] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 93 

by a glorious vision, presenting to them their Master, 
not with the environments of regal pomp, but as the 
equal associate of the venerated ancient teachers of 
their faith. And such being the case, I understand 
further, that the presence of Moses and Eljah was 
visionary, and not real ; that it was not Moses and 
Elijah actually conversing with Jesus that the Apostles 
saw, but that a vision of such a scene was presented 
to their view. This interpretation, I conceive, meets 
the full force of the Evangelist's language. " There 
appeared unto them " (w^^o-ow), or " There was a 
vision to them of," or, "They seemed to see." (See 
Acts ii. 3 ; xvi. 9.) And let it be remarked, in con- 
firmation of this view, that Jesus himself calls the 
scene a " vision " (Matt. xvii. 9). 

The question may arise, How could the three Apos- 
tles recognize the visionary forms as representations of 
Moses and Elijah I I reply : All nations have their 
traditionary representations of eminent persons of an- 
cient times. The Jews no doubt had theirs of the 
giver and the restorer of the Law, — the former per- 
haps bearing his " two tables of testimony " (Exod. 
xxxiv. 29), the latter in that dress which John the Bap- 
tist appears to have imitated (2 Kings i. 8 ; Matt. iii. 
4), — and to these conventional patterns the images 
presented to the view of the Apostles would, of course, 
be made to conform. 

The author of the Second Epistle of Peter (i. 16 - 
19) appears to have taken the view which I propose 
of this transaction, as having been designed to affect 
the mind, not of Jesus, but of his disciples. 

XVII. 5. 

While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them ; 
and behold, a voice out of the cloud, which said, " This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him." 



94 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVII. 10-13. 

Here again I find a reference to that all-important 
prediction of Moses (Deut. xviii. 15, 19), which, more 
than any thing else in the Old Testament, connects 
the Jewish dispensation with the Christian. At the 
baptism of Jesus (Matt. iii. 17) a voice from heaven 
had declared him to be God's beloved Son, the ex- 
pected Messiah. Now a second time that announce- 
ment was made. To it was now added the charge, 
" Hear ye him," in evident allusion, as I think, to what 
Moses had said of the prophet whom he foretold : " To 
him shall ye hearken." And when from the cloud 
which wrapped the visionary forms of Moses and Elias 
there came this voice, the proclamation was made 
which the Apostles needed, in their hitherto misguided 
state of mind respecting the Messiah's office ; they 
were taught that he was not to be another David, 
as their worldly fancies had depicted him, but a teacher 
of religion, such as the toil-worn Moses and the per- 
secuted Elijah had been ; — not the warlike king, 
whom the later writers of the nation had erringly sup- 
posed, but the very "prophet like unto himself" fore- 
seen in the inspired vision of the ancient lawgiver; 
and that therefore, when Jesus told them of the oppo- 
sition and sufferings he was to undergo in the prose- 
cution of his work, it ought not to scandalize them 
(xvi. 21 - 23) as if it were something inconsistent with 
his office. 

XVII. 10-13. 

And his disciples asked him, saying, " Why then say the scribes 
that Elias must first come ? " And Jesus answered and said 
unto them, " Elias truly shall first come, and restore all 
things ; but I say unto you, that Elias is come already, and 
they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they 
listed ; likewise also shall the Son of man suffer of them." 
Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of 
John the Baptist. 



XVII. 10-13.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 95 

The Apostles questioned with themselves respecting 
the relation borne by the visionary appearance of 
Elijah, which they had just witnessed, to the doctrine 
inculcated by the teachers of the Law, that a manifes- 
tation of Elijah was to precede that of the Messiah. 
Their words may be differently rendered ; either, 

" How fitly then [as appears from what we have 
seen] do the scribes say that Elias must first 
come ! " or, 

" What then is this 1 [t/ ovv ;] The scribes say," 
&c. ; or, 

" What then do the scribes say [Xeyovcnv] 1 is it that 
Elias must first come ! " or, 

« Why may we not tell the vision 1 (Comp. 9.) The 
scribes say," &c. ; so the vision of Elias is but an ac- 
complishment of their word, and if we proclaim it, it 
should win them to the Messiah's cause. 

The Apostles referred to that current opinion on 
which I have remarked above (pp. 74, 86), and Jesus, 
in his reply, repeats what he had said on a former 
occasion (xi. 14), that John the Baptist was the only 
Elias, the only herald of the kingdom of heaven, who 
would appear; adding that, as John, contrary to what 
they expected of Elijah, had been unrecognized, per- 
secuted, and slain, so would it be with his greater 
follower (xvii. 12; comp. xvi. 21). John, the Mes- 
siah's precursor, was not literally Elijah, nor did the 
true Saviour of the world correspond to that idea in 
their minds to which they gave the name Messiah. 
But there was a true sense in which he might assume 
the name Messiah to himself as he had done (xvi. 16, 
17), and in a similar sense he might give Elijah's name 
to John. 



96 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVIII. 1. 

XVIII. 1. 

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, " Who 
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? " 

The text illustrates the merely worldly views enter- 
tained by all Jews of our Saviour's time, and inherited 
by them from their ancestors, respecting the nature of 
the institution which their expected King of the Jews 
was to establish. Recognizing him in that character, 
the disciples desired to know which of them he pro- 
posed to promote to be his prime-minister. In oppo- 
sition to the doctrine of their ancient kings and sages, 
Jesus informs them in his reply (2-4), that they must 
disengage their minds from all such views before they 
will be fit for even the lowest place among his follow- 
ers, and that the exaltation which he is to confer is 
such only as will follow upon becoming humble, do- 
cile, simple, and unselfish. 

XIX. 4, 5. 

He answered and said unto them, " Have ye not read, that he 
which made them at the beginning, made them male and fe- 
male, and said, ' For this cause shall a man leave father and 
mother, and shall cleave to his wife ; and they twain shall be 
one flesh ' ? " 

According to both accounts preserved by Moses of 
the origin of the human race (Gen. i. 27, ii. 21 -23 ; 
comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 31, 35), " he which 
made them at the beginning, made them male and 
female " ; and to one of the accounts (ii. 24) is sub- 
joined the rule of conjugal duty, which our Lord 
quotes : " For this cause," &c. The quotation pre- 
cisely follows the Septuagint, except in the omission of 
the pronoun before " father " and " mother," and in 
an unimportant change of the syntax after the words 
" shall cleave " ; and the Septuagint exactly represents 



XIX. 7, 8.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 97 

the Hebrew, except in the insertion of the words " the 
two." Whether the rule quoted, "For this cause," 
&c., is ascribed in the original narrative to Adam or to 
Moses as its author, may admit of question. I incline 
to think that we are to regard Moses as speaking 
therein, in the way of an inference from the ancient 
account which he was repeating of the creation of 
woman. If so, instead of " and said " (Matt. xix. 5), 
which erroneous translation of our Lord's words makes 
him refer the words quoted to God, contrary to the 
statement in the Old Testament narrative, we ought 
to read " and he [or, and Moses] said." 

XIX. 7, 8. 

They say unto him, " Why did Moses then command to give a 
writing of divorcement, and to put her away ? " He saith 
unto them, " Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, 
suffered you to put away your wives ; but from the begin- 
ning it was not so." 

The reference of the questioners was to the law of 
divorce in Deuteronomy (xxiv. 1 - 4). In his reply, 
our Lord describes the spirit of the Mosaic legislation 
in one of its important characteristics. Some of its 
apparent precepts were only permissions, allowances, 
concessions to the low state of thought and morality 
among the people whom it had undertaken to educate, 
and whom it could only educate by taking them up at 
the low stage of improvement at which they were, 
adapting its discipline to their existing condition, and 
gradually raising them to a capacity for better things. 
(See "Lectures," &c, Vol. I. pp. 97-100, 178-181, 
471.) 

Let it be observed, also, that our Lord's language 
and reasoning here attribute the Law to Moses. 
9 



98 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIX. 28. 

XIX. 28. 

Jesus said unto them, " Verily I say unto you, that ye which 
have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man 
shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon 
twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." 

What I understand to be the origin and sense of the 
expression " the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of 
his glory," I have fully explained above (pp. 66, 88 et 
seq.). The words " in the regeneration " we may either 
connect with the clause which follows them, and then 
we shall understand them to refer to the time when, 
after the establishment of Christ's religion, its regener- 
ating influences shall be in full action on the world ; — 
or we may connect them with the preceding words, as 
our translators have done, and then by " ye who have 
followed me in the regeneration " we shall understand, 
ye that have been associated with me in my labors 
for the introduction of the proposed reform. The 
imagery is continued to the close of the verse. As, 
adopting the phraseology in Daniel (vii. 13, 14), Jesus 
calls his establishment in a moral dominion, a sitting 
upon " the throne of his glory," so he tells his Apos- 
tles, who were to be the agents and representatives of 
his spiritual administration, that they too shall sit 
on thrones. And the figure is still further carried out. 
There were as many Apostles as there had been Jewish 
tribes ; and this coincidence is brought to view in the 
language in which they are told that they are to have 
spiritual rule over God's people. The word judge 
here, as often in Scripture (comp. 1 Sam. viii. 5, Is. 
xl. 23), means simply to govern, to exercise sway; not 
to administer law, but to give, to promulgate it, which 
latter function belonged strictly to the Apostolic office. 
The twelve Apostles together were to give law to 
collective Israel. Nothing is said of any such distri- 
bution of power as that each Apostle should have a 



XXI. 4, 5.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 99 

tribe for his separate jurisdiction. One name of Is- 
rael regarded collectively was the twelve tribes (ScoBe/ca- 
(pv\ov), or the twelve-tribed nation. (Comp. Acts xxvi. 7.) 

XXI. 4, 5. 

All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
by the prophet, saying, " Tell ye the daughter of Zion, 
'Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon 
an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.' " 

The passage from Zechariah (ix. 9), which is here 
quoted, reads, according to the Hebrew (which the 
Septuagint also follows very nearly) : — 

" Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ! 
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem ! 
Behold, thy King cometh to thee. 
He is just and victorious, 
Mild, and riding upon an ass, 
Even upon a colt, the foal of an ass." 

The prefatory words in Matthew, " Tell ye the 
daughter of Zion," appear to be taken from another 
prophet (Is. lxii. 11). 

In commenting upon the passage as it stands in its 
original connection, I expressed the opinion (" Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. III. p. 489) that the writer was but 
clothing in poetical language his conception of the 
Messiah as of a prince returning from successful for- 
eign expeditions, and, seated no longer on his war- 
horse, but on the animal appropriate to festal proces- 
sions, entering his shouting capital in the stately 
pageantry of peace (comp. Zech. ix. 10). Many read- 
ers, however, entertain the opinion that Matthew rep- 
resents the words as containing a supernatural predic- 
tion, in which their original writer, Zechariah, in the 
sixth century before Jesus, described an act of Jesus 
so precisely, as at once to prove his own miraculous 
foreknowledge, and to furnish an evidence, through 



100 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXI. 4,5. 

the correspondence of the event with the prophecy, of 
the Messiahship of our Lord. I ask the attention of 
such readers to the following considerations. 

1. The introductory language, " All this was done 
that it might be fulfilled," &c, proves nothing of that 
kind. For the true meaning of that phraseology, I 
refer to my remarks upon it in another place. (See 
above, pp. 25-33.) 

2. If Matthew had meant to put the meaning sup- 
posed upon Zechariah's words and their fulfilment, he 
would have been careful to quote those words pre- 
cisely. Otherwise his argument would have no force. 
Clearly it would be utterly irrelevant to say, " These 
words of an ancient prophet, uttered centuries before, 
were a miraculous prediction of an act of Jesus," and 
then to go on to quote, as words of that prophet, some 
which in fact he had not written. (See " Lectures," 
&c., Vol. III. p. 336.) But such a precise quotation 
Matthew has not made. This alone is sufficient to 
prove that his design was not that which has been as- 
cribed to him. 

3. In no sense of Zechariah's words does the pro- 
ceeding recorded by Matthew circumstantially corre- 
spond with them. Zechariah spoke of " an ass, even 
a colt, an ass's foal " ; Matthew, of a young ass, and 
its dam. Zechariah spoke of the King of Zion as 
coming " victorious " (!?&')}, comp. Deut. xxxiii. 29, 
Ps. xxxiii. 16, Zech. x. 6), a particular which does 
not apply to Jesus. 

4. The proceeding was one incapable, from its 
nature, of being an attestation to the Messiah's mis- 
sion. For what was there to prevent a false pretender 
to that character from giving the same sign 1 A frau- 
dulent claimant to the dignity of the Messiah might 
have ridden into Jerusalem upon an ass ; and then., 



XXL 9.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 101 

according to the argument, he would have proved him- 
self the true claimant. 

Whether Jesus, in this proceeding, intended any 
reference whatever to this language applied to it by 
his Apostle, when relating it many years after, admits 
of a question. Jesus undoubtedly intended, by a con- 
spicuous act, to attract the attention of the city to 
himself, as the great personage looked for from ancient 
times. The manner of his public entry, on an ass and 
not on a war-horse, rebuked the error which repre- 
sented the Messiah as a warlike chief. If, still further, 
he intended his act to have a reference to Zechariah's 
words, we may understand his meaning to have been 
the same as if he had said : You have expected to 
see, in the Messiah, a sanguinary hero ; I have come 
as a peaceful teacher, and therefore you are disposed 
to reject my claim ; but let what I now do remind you 
that, if your ancient sages, your prophets, have often 
given that representation of him which you adopt, 
one, at least, has invested him with the associations of 
gentleness and peace. Do not refuse to listen to me 
because I do not come, as one writer has represented 
the Messiah, with garments rolled in blood (Is. lxiii. 
1-6) ; remember that another pictured him as the 
benignant leader that I now appear. 

Mark (xi. 1-8) and Luke (xix. 29-36) relate also 
the entrance of Jesus into the holy city, riding upon 
an ass. But they do not appear to have ascribed any 
part of the interest of that incident to its correspond- 
ence with the language of Zechariah, for they have not 
alluded to that correspondence. 

XXI. 9. 

And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, 
saying, " Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed is he that 
cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest ! " 

9 # 



102 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXI. 13. 

According to its etymology, Hosanna (fcO JW'i/1) 
means simply, " Save now, I pray ! " or " Be propi- 
tious." (Comp. Ps. cxviii. 25.) It came to be used 
in a general way for a mere salutation of honor, in 
the vague sense of some English interjections which 
are but the indefinite utterances of excitement and en- 
thusiasm. " In the highest," added to " Hosanna," 
seems but to have an intensive sense, such as " all " 
has, when prefixed to " hail." (Comp. Ps. cxlviii. 1 ; 
Luke ii. 14.) The words, " Blessed is he that cometh 
in the name of the Lord," are taken from a Psalm 
(cxviii. 26), the writer of which does not appear to 
have had the Messiah in view according to any con- 
ception of his office. It is said that this Psalm was 
familiar to the Jews, from being recited by them at 
the Feast of Tabernacles and other festivals. Whether 
this was so or not, the language of this verse well 
answered their purpose when they intended to salute 
Jesus as the Christ coming in Jehovah's name. 

XXI. 13. 

And said unto them, " It is written, ' My house shall be called 
the house of prayer ; but ye have made it a den of thieves.' " 

The pseudo-Isaiah, imagining a time when numerous 
proselytes shall be made to the Jewish faith, represents 
Jehovah as saying (lvi. 7), " Mine house shall be 
called a house of prayer for all people." Jesus natu- 
rally adopts part of these words to declare the purpose 
to which the temple ought to be devoted, to the exclu- 
sion of every other use. These words only I under- 
stand Jesus to have quoted, with the preface, " It is 
written." But, in the antithesis which he presents in 
the next clause, he appears to have reference to Jere- 
miah's language (vii. 11), " Is this house, which is 
called by my name, become a den of robbers in your 
eyes 1 " 



XXI. 42.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 103 

XXI. 16. 

Jesus saith unto them, " Yea ; have ye never read, Out of the 
mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ? " 

This sentence is taken from a Psalm (viii. 2) in 
which the author sets forth the goodness of Jehovah in 
making man the chief among his works. Jesus, with- 
out any intimation of its containing prediction of any 
sort, which it evidently does not, makes a natural ap- 
plication of its language, as being suitable to describe 
the welcome with which he was received by children 
in the temple. The Septuagint version is followed, 
which has a word corresponding to " praise " (ahov), 
where the original Hebrew has " strength " (t#). Per- 
haps, however, the Hebrew word will bear the mean- 
ing of the Greek. 

XXI. 42. 

Jesus saith unto them, " Did ye never read in the Scriptures, 
The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become 
the head of the corner ; this is the Lord's doing, and it is 
marvellous in our eyes ? " 

The quotation is from a Psalm (cxviii. 22, 23 ; comp. 
Is. viii. 14, xxviii. 16), the occasion, date, and author 
of which are alike unknown. It celebrates a deliver- 
ance, through Jehovah's favor, from distress and hos- 
tility. By the natural figure of a stone, rejected at 
first as unfit for use, but afterwards selected to be the 
very corner-stone and fundamental support of a build- 
ing, the writer illustrates his own transfer from a de- 
pressed and assailed to a conspicuous and honored 
position. Jesus had uttered a parable (xxi. 33 - 39 ; 
comp. Is. v. 1-7) in which he had intimated his own 
rejection by the Jewish people. Assured of the future 
triumph of his cause, he obscurely expressed that con- 
fidence of his by recalling the words of that ancient 



104 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXII. 24. 

worthy, who, from being cast by with contumely, had 
" become the head of the corner." 

XXII. 24. 

Moses said, " If a man die, having no children, his brother 
shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother." 

These words are not precisely quoted, but their sub- 
stance is found in the Book of Deuteronomy (xxv. 5 ; 
comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. I. p. 470). 

XXII. 31, 32. 

As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that 
which was spoken unto you by God, saying, " I am the God 
of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob " ? 
God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. 

The reference is to a passage in Exodus (iii. 6), 
where Jehovah is related to have manifested himself 
to Moses in Midian. 

Does Jesus declare that the doctrine of the resur- 
rection of the dead is disclosed in this passage of the 
Pentateuch 1 And if so, what is that interpretation 
of the passage by which he makes it yield this sense 1 

To say of one party that he bears a relation to 
another, is not to declare that both are living. We 
may say that A is the grandson of B, without meaning 
that B survives. We may call Soult one of Napole- 
on's marshals, without betraying an ignorance of the 
fact that Napoleon is long ago dead. " We are Abra- 
ham's children " (John viii. 33), is an expression which 
has no reference to a continued life of Abraham. Jesus 
could not have meant to argue in this way from the 
words which he quotes. 

This appears still more certain, when we consider 
that the only word in the translated sentence, from 
which such an argument as is supposed could possibly 



XXII. 31,32.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 105 

be derived, is not in the sentence as written by Moses. 
The copula (am), according to Hebrew use, is not ex- 
pressed, but left to be understood. In a translation, 
the past form (was) might be introduced instead of the 
present. The only basis for the supposed argument is 
found in the form of a translation, and not in the 
original. In other words, it does not exist. 

The narrative of Matthew does not contain all that 
Jesus said on this occasion. Had it done so, it is to 
be presumed that we should better understand how he 
meant to treat the subject. That the account is in- 
complete, appears from its being given in an extended 
form by Luke (xx. 37, 38), whose own relation may 
have been imperfect, as well as that of Matthew. 

It appears to me that the sense of Jesus was this : 
According to the common acceptation of language, in 
calling himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
Jehovah announced those patriarchs as his favorites, 
and himself as their friend. (Comp. Gen. xvii. 8 ; 
xxvi. 3 ; xxxv. 12 ; Exod. iii. 6-8; Jer. vii. 23 ; Heb. 
xi. 16.) But whomsoever Jehovah distingu shes by 
his love and favor, he will not suffer to perish. The 
cherished of Jehovah he will not let die. " All live 
to him " ; rather, all his, all belonging to him, all dear 
to him, live. Life is his to bestow, and to those whom 
he loves he will assuredly give it. 

We are to remember further, that, in the series of 
discourses here collected, Jesus was arguing with the 
mistaken and conceited Pharisees and Sadducees, with 
a view not so much to convince as to perplex, con- 
found, and humble them. For this purpose it was 
suitable that he should assail them with their own 
weapons, showing them that their own methods of in- 
terpretation would overthrow, or leave unsustained, 
their own conclusions. The Pharisees had taken 



106 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXII. 40. 

" counsel how they might entangle him in his talk " 
(xxii. 15). They tried to do it, and failed ; his an- 
swer to their insidious sophistry was such, " that they 
marvelled and left him, and went their way" (22). 
The Sadducees tried next (23), " and when the multi- 
tude heard " how he replied to them, " they were 
astonished at his doctrine " (33). " When the Phari- 
sees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to si- 
lence," they repeated the experiment (34); and with 
so little success, that " no man was able to answer him 
a word, neither durst any man, from that day forth, 
ask him any more questions " (46). The object im- 
mediately in hand was to silence these troublesome 
and arrogant doctors of Judaism, and divest them of 
that influence over the people's minds which they 
used so subtly for the hinderance of the Gospel. Their 
incompetency was best exposed, when arguments such 
as those to which they were themselves accustomed 
were employed for their defeat and confusion. To dis- 
arm and silence an adverse disputant, his own opinions 
and methods of argument, even though they be erro- 
neous, may be legitimately turned against him. 

XXII. 40. 

On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Proph- 
ets. 

Of the two commandments to which Jesus refers, 
one is found in the Book of Leviticus (xix. 18), the 
other in that of Deuteronomy (vi. 5). In right and 
earnest affections towards God and man, says Jesus, 
in a piety and benevolence which enlist and occupy the 
whole being, all religion consists and is summed up. 
Religion is not ceremony, though forms of worship 
may suitably express it ; it is not speculation, though 
divine truth is its fit sustenance and excitement ; it is 



XXII. 41-45.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 107 

not moral observance, though a sober, righteous, and 
useful life will be sure to be its fruit. It is strictly 
the state of that heart which abounds and overflows 
with devotion towards God, and good-will to man. 
And such religion, says Jesus, it was God's ultimate 
purpose in the Law (greatly as the objects of that dis- 
pensation have been misunderstood) to create, estab- 
lish, and extend among men. (See " Lectures," &c, 
Vol. I. pp. 91 - 100, 176-181.) And in their ten- 
dency to excite and diffuse such a spirit consists the 
value of the writings of those revered men whom you 
call your prophets. Creed and ritual, temple and 
priest, separate nationality and holy days, all that 
Moses authoritatively enjoined, and all that good men 
in the ages since have celebrated, have just as much 
value (and no more) as they have efficacy to promote 
in the human heart and spread through the human 
race the love of God and the love of man (comp. 
Matt. v. 17, 18). 

XXII. 41 - 45. 

/While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 
saying, " What think ye of [the] Christ ? whose son is he ? " 
They say unto him, " The son of David." He saith unto 
them, " How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, 
4 The Lord said unto my Lord, " Sit thou on my right hand, 
till I make thine enemies thy footstool " ' ? If David then call 
him Lord, how is he his son ? " 

The quotation is from a Psalm (ex. 1) in which, if 
I understand it correctly (see " Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. 
pp. 314- 316), the expected Messiah was referred to, 
and described agreeably to the erroneous conceptions 
of that personage which prevailed in the time of the 
writer, King David (comp. Mark xii. 36 ; Luke xx. 42). 

At first view, looking only at the shape of the ar- 
gument, the purpose of Jesus might seem to be to 



108 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXII. 41-45. 

prove to the Pharisees, with whom he was conversing, 
that they were wrong in supposing that the Messiah 
whom they were expecting would be of David's pos- 
terity. — The Messiah is David's " lord " ; David him- 
self has called him so ; but is not that fact inconsis- 
tent with his being David's son % is not the son the 
parent's inferior instead of his " lord " % 

But alike from the terms of the conversation and 
from its context, I infer that the object of Jesus was 
not to prove or disprove any thing, but simply to per- 
plex the Pharisees, and show to the by-standers what 
incompetent teachers they were, and what shallow and 
unskilful interpreters of the Old Testament Scriptures. 
The Pharisees, on a fundamental article, held two 
opinions, which, with all their pretensions to wisdom 
and authority, they did not know how to reconcile. 
Jesus but exposed this fact, without saying whether 
they were right or wrong in their conception of the 
expected Messiah as a " son of David." His purpose 
was answered when " no man was able to answer him 
a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask 
him any more questions." He had confounded the 
Sadducees (xxii. 23 et seq.) as to the interpretation of 
a passage in the Pentateuch ; he now perplexed the 
Pharisees as to the interpretation of a Psalm ; thus 
addressing himself to both sects with references to 
parts of the Old Testament to which they respectively 
attributed authority. (See " Lectures," &c., Vol. II. 
pp. 139-141.) 

" How then doth David in spirit call him Lord 1 " 
asked Jesus ; and this expression has been hastily 
understood as importing that our Lord imputed a 
special inspiration, a miraculous illumination, to Da- 
vid, aiding him in the composition of the hundred and 
tenth Psalm. The least that such a supernatural in- 



XXIII. 13.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 109 

spiration, had David possessed it, might have been ex- 
pected to do, would be to keep him from describing 
the future Messiah, the meek and peaceful Jesus of 
Nazareth, as a furious soldier who should " strike 
through kings," and pile up heaps of bloody and head- 
less corpses, and slay till he should be exhausted with 
weariness and thirst (Ps. ex. 5 - 7). But the truth is, 
the words "in spirit" (ev irvevixan) have no such nar- 
row meaning. David spoke of the Messiah " in spirit," 
because he referred to him in spiritual contemplation , 
under a devout impulse, when musing of him in a re- 
ligious state of mind. In the Scriptural sense of the 
phrase, a person is " in the spirit," or is " filled with 
the spirit," when he is occupied with religious thoughts, 
when he experiences a spiritual excitement and eleva- 
tion, when he is in a pious frame of mind, when he is 
operated upon by spiritual motives. When Jesus 
spoke of David as having been " in spirit," he no more 
declared that David was inspired, according to the 
technical sense of that word, than he imputed inspira- 
tion to all true worshippers in the coming ages of his 
Church. (John iv. 23 ; comp. Acts iv. 8 ; vi. 3 ; vii. 
55 ; xiii. 52; xviii. 25 ; Rom. i. 9; viii. 13 ; xii. 11 ; 
1 Cor. xii. 3 ; 2 Cor. iv. 13 ; Gal. v. 5, 16, 17, 18, 25 ; 
Eph. v. 18; vi. 18; Phil. i. 19; iii. 3; 1 Tim. iv. 12.) 

XXIII. 13. 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ; for ye shut 
up the kingdom of heaven against men ; for ye neither go in 
yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. 

To the company of disciples of that pure faith 
which he was about to establish, Jesus gave that name 
of " kingdom of heaven " which had long been in use 
as denoting the Messiah's expected reign. In that 
company the scribes and Pharisees would not enroll 
10 



110 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXIII. 35. 

themselves, nor suffer it to be enlarged by the acces- 
sion of any whom they could influence and restrain. 
They would keep the door shut, and the fold empty. 
" Ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men." 
A more literal translation would better represent the 
imagery : " Ye shut the kingdom of heaven in the face 
of men." 

XXIII. 35. 

That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the 
earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of 
Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the 
temple and the altar. 

In the Second Book of Chronicles (xxiv. 20, 21) we 
read of a Zechariah, who is related to have been stoned 
to death " in the courts of the house of the Lord." 
But he is said to have been " the son of Jehoiada the 
priest." On the other hand, Zechariah, author of a 
book in the Old Testament collection, is called " the 
son of Barachiah " (Zech. i. 1). It is true that Jehoia- 
da, father of that Zechariah whose tragical death is 
recorded in the history, may have been otherwise 
named Barachiah ; or that the name Jehoiada may 
have been erroneously given him in the history, and 
that Jesus, in his allusion, may have restored his true 
name ; or that Zechariah, the author of the book in 
the collection of the Minor Prophets, may have been 
slain " between the temple and the altar," though Old 
Testament history has not preserved the record of that 
fact. But neither of these suppositions appears so 
probable, as that, by a lapse of memory on the part of 
Matthew, the Zechariah whose death is recorded in 
the Book of Chronicles was confounded with the more 
famous prophet of the same name. 

Our Lord is saying that, by their cruelty to his dis- 
ciples, the Jews should provoke Divine judgments, so 



XXIV. 15.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. Ill 

heavy that it might seem as if all the murders recorded 
in the Old Testament, from the earliest to the latest 
age, were avenged in their persons. In its whole cast 
the language is so figurative that it would be out of 
the question to think of inferring from it the historical 
truth of any such narrative as that of the murder of 
Abel by Cain. 

XXIV. 3. 

The disciples came unto him privately, saying, " Tell us, when 
shall these things be ? and what shall be the sign of thy 
coming, and of the end of the world ? " 



Instead of " the end of the world," I render, the 
of the age, meaning by the age the same as is denoted 
by the more full expression this age in distinction from 
the age to come ; namely, the age of the Jewish dis- 
pensation, the ante-Messianic period. The Messiah's 
" coming," and " the end of the age," concerning which 
the disciples inquired, I conceive to have been but two 
expressions for the same thing, or rather expressions 
indicating two events necessarily coincident in point of 
time. In the parallel passages, Mark (xiii. 4) and 
Luke (xxi. 7) say nothing about " the end of the 
world," from which we infer that the question con- 
cerning it was not an independent question, but prac- 
tically equivalent to the preceding one, respecting the 
" coming " of Christ. What the questioners desired 
to know was, the time when the preparatory Mosaic 
institution should terminate, and the Messiah's reign 
begin. For my view of the origin and force of the 
phraseology, I refer to remarks on previous passages 
of this book (pp. 78, 79). 

XXIV. 15. 

When ye, therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, 
spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place 
(whoso readeth, let him understand). 



112 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXIV. 29. 

Looking forward to that desecration of the temple 
by the Roman invaders, which was to take place forty 
years after his time, Jesus referred to it as what might 
be well described by language used (Dan. ix. 26, 27) 
respecting another event, in the book called that of 
Daniel the prophet. (See " Lectures," &c, Vol. II. p. 
387 ; IV. p. 414 ; see also above, pp. 49, 50.) Luke 
(xxi. 20), in his record of the same discourse, recites 
no reference to Daniel, as it may be supposed that he 
would have done had that reference made a substan- 
tive part of our Lord's statement. 

" Whoso readeth, let him understand." These pa- 
renthetical words I consider to be words of Matthew, 
and not of Jesus, whom we should rather expect 
to find saying, " Whoso heareth, let him understand." 
Matthew wrote before the events predicted by Jesus 
took place. He recorded the prediction as he remem- 
bered to have heard it uttered by his Master. But he 
did not pretend himself to understand its precise im- 
port, nor could he expect it to be understood, at pres- 
ent, by the reader of his narrative. 

XXIV. 29. 

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be 
darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the 
stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens 
shall be shaken. 

Language figuratively descriptive of a great moral 
revolution, after the manner of that poetical phraseol- 
ogy with which the hearers of Jesus were familiar, as 
used by the prophets in the same sense. (Comp. 
"Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 328-330.) 

XXIV. 30. 

Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven ; and 
then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall 



XXV. 31-33.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 113 

see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with 
power and great glory. 

Since the time when the Book of Daniel was written, 
and very probably from an earlier period, the Jews had 
been in the habit of using this language (Dan. vii. 13, 
14, xii. 1, 2) in relation to the expected appearance 
of their Messiah. This language, so familiar to them, 
and so expressive, Jesus, their true Messiah, God's 
anointed messenger to them, adopted in announcing 
his speedy assumption of his spiritual authority. To 
use this language was simply to say, in a form accom- 
modated to their conceptions, The Messiah then shall 
set up his dominion among you and in the world. 
(See above, pp. 66, 88, 98 et seq.) 

XXIV. 38. 

As in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and 
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that 
Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, 
and took them all away, &c. 

No one, from this language of Jesus, can infer the 
historical credit of the account of the deluge in the 
Pentateuch (Gen. vi. 13 et seq.), unless he is prepared 
to maintain that illustrations cannot as properly be 
drawn from fictitious narrative as from true. We are 
in the habit of deriving lessons from the stories of the 
benevolent Samaritan and the prodigal son, and Jesus 
derived one from that of the unjust judge, going so 
far, in relation to this, as to use the language, " Hear 
what the unjust judge saith " (Luke xviii. 6). 

XXV. 31 - 33. 

When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the 

angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his 

glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations ; and he 

shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth 

10* 



114 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXY. 31-33. 

his sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep on his 
right hand, but the goats on the left. 

With these all-important words, and those which, 
extending to the end of the chapter, follow out and 
complete their meaning, Jesus closes this long dis- 
course, the last which he is recorded to have uttered 
before that paschal supper with the twelve, from which 
he went to be betrayed to his death. These words are 
the climax of his instructions. In language familiar 
to his hearers, he had before declared that the Mes- 
siah's advent was at hand ; that the prophet, ages before 
announced by Moses, and indicated, though with a 
large mixture of erroneous conceptions, by the line of 
later Jewish sages, was about to assume his office. 
" The Son of Man " he had said (xxiv. 30) was " com- 
ing in the clouds of heaven with power and great 
glory." Now at last he proceeded to declare in what 
sense he employed those magnificent expressions. He 
proceeded to explain, that what he meant by them was 
the establishment of a moral empire, of a religious 
administration. The Messiah would institute a rule 
which would distinguish not at all between the Jew 
and the Gentile, but simply between the wicked and 
the good. Here at length was developed the whole 
plan of the government of which he was to be the 
head. 

" When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and 
all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the 
throne of his glory, and before him shall be gath- 
ered all nations." And what then ? How will he 
exercise this universal sway \ What sort of a domin- 
ion will be this glorious throne of his % Will he op- 
press the subject heathen 1 Will he exalt to wealth 
and grandeur his brethren of the stock of Abraham, 
and distinguish with peculiar honors the companions 



XXV. 31-33.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 115 

of his day of small things, the faithful men who had 
been " with him in the regeneration "% — Nothing of 
all this. He would apply the principles of a moral 
retribution. He would govern men as moral agents. 
The everlasting distinctions between right and wrong, 
between righteousness and inhumanity, between love 
and selfishness, would be all that his dominion would 
recognize. His august power would be used to en- 
courage and reward those who delighted to succor 
and serve the needy, the helpless, the oppressed, the 
forsaken of their fellow-men, while to be indifferent to 
their sorrows would be to provoke the retributions of 
his unbending law of equity. 

According to this understanding of the passage, 
which the text and context appear to me absolutely to 
require, it evidently lends no authority to the common 
opinion of a simultaneous judgment of all men at the 
time of a future second coming of Christ. That opin- 
ion I take to be alike destitute of support from reason 
and from Scripture. What Jesus here refers to is 
simply the office which his religion is to discharge in 
the world, — the principles of that administration 
which Christianity is to establish among men. The 
coming of the Son of Man of which he speaks, is sim- 
ply the establishment of that religion. " When the 
Son of Man shall have come (comp. 1 Cor. xv. 54) in 
his glory, and all the holy angels with him," — i. e. 
when that institution of the Messiah's dominion shall 
have taken place, which an ancient writer has indi- 
cated in these words, — " then shall he sit upon the 
throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered 
all nations, and he shall separate them one from 
another," &c. That is, thenceforward shall he admin- 
ister a moral government upon those rules and princi- 
ples of moral administration which the rest of the 



116 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXV. 31-33. 

passage proceeds to specify. The erroneous, current 
exposition of the passage depends mainly, perhaps, 
upon a particular force unjustifiably attributed to the 
particles when and then, as if they could only import 
a reference to a point of time, — an assumption than 
which none could be more unfounded. If I say that, 
when I come into possession of an estate which I am 
expecting, then I will be liberal, no one understands 
me to mean that my liberality is to be confined to the 
hour or the day when I acquire its resources, but that 
I will be liberal then and thenceforivard, — that, having 
come into a certain condition, I will not only begin, 
but continue to conduct myself accordingly. So in 
the case before us. When, says Jesus, the Messiah's 
kingdom is set up, — when his religion has taken its 
permanent place among the influences by which God 
acts on man, — then and thenceforward retributions will 
be dispensed according to its distinctive principles, and 
(for any thing this text says to the contrary) dispensed 
to every man immediately, as , every man leaves this 
probationary world. No doubt, before Christianity 
was revealed, men were judged according to the same 
essential principles of rectitude which Christianity 
recognizes ; but it is agreeable to those principles that 
men should be judged more or less strictly, according 
as, while living, they had been in possession of more 
or less light. Before the Christian revelation, men 
could not rightfully be judged by the law of Chris- 
tianity, so far as that was distinct from, being an im- 
provement upon, the law of natural reason. When the 
Christian revelation was made, — that is, from and 
after the time of its being made, — they who had come 
into the possession of it were rightfully judged by it. 
The object of the passage is to develop and pro- 
claim the character of the Messiah's kingdom, as being 



XXVI. 24.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 117 

a moral government. The Jews, and among them the 
Jewish disciples of Jesus, looked for a Son of Man, 
who, when he should sit on the throne of his glory, 
establishing a political administration, would gather 
Jews around him, to lead them to victory, vengeance, 
and spoils. Jesus, using almost his last opportunity 
to rectify his disciples' still faint and erroneous views 
concerning the nature of his empire, told them that, 
on the contrary, when he should sit on the throne of 
his glory, all nations alike would be gathered before 
him as subjects of his administration, and that that 
administration would be of a spiritual character, ex- 
erting itself in the adjudging of retributions agreea- 
bly to the principles of a moral discrimination. All 
nations would be his subjects, and the question con- 
cerning them would be, not of whom they were born, 
of Abraham or of some other parentage, but how 
they had done their duty in life. He now expands 
the doctrine which in part of the same words he had 
briefly announced on a former occasion. (Comp. xvi. 
27, 28.) 

XXVI. 24. 

The Son of Man goeth, as it is written of him. 

Suppose Jesus, when he says " The Son of Man 
goeth," to refer to his death (which has been denied 
by some commentators, but I think without reason), 
what did he mean by saying that he was about to die, 
as it was written ? Where was it written that he 
should die 1 Nowhere in the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures, if I interpret them correctly. It was written, 
so to speak, in the book of the Divine purposes. It 
was so determined and arranged by God's providence. 
The figure is a simple one, and is in frequent Scrip- 
tural use. (See Job xiii. 26 ; Ps. cxxxix. 16 ; cxlix. 



118 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXVI. 31. 

9 ; Prov. viii. 15 ; Is. x. 1 ; lxv. 6.) Luke evidently 
understood this to be our Lord's meaning ; for in the 
parallel passage (xxii. 22) he reports Jesus as having 
said, " The Son of Man goeth as it ivas determined " 
(wpia-fxevovy 

XXVI. 31. 

Then saith Jesus unto them, " All ye shall be offended because 
of me this night ; for it is written, ' I will smite the Shepherd, 
and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.' " 

In the prophecy of Zechariah (xiii. 7) we read, ac- 
cording to the Hebrew text : — 

" Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, 
Even against my fellow, saith Jehovah of hosts ; 
Smite the shepherd, and let the sheep be scattered." 

The Alexandrine version has shepherds for " shep- 
herd " in both instances ; and for the last clause it 
reads, " and pluck away the sheep." 

In the original passage, Zechariah, after the usual 
manner of the writers of his class, "forebodes great 
national calamities, to be succeeded by as signal pub- 
lic prosperity and glory. Jehovah, he says, designs to 
smite the shepherd of his people, and scatter the sheep, 
and turn his hand against the lambs. Two thirds of 
the whole nation shall be cut off and die, and only a 
third part survive," &e. (" Lectures," &c, Vol. III. 
p. 494.) It seems scarcely possible to do greater vio- 
lence to language, than by that interpretation which 
supposes our Lord to have found here a prediction of 
the circumstances of his arrest by the Jews. He does 
but refer to language originally used in respect to one 
occasion, and apply it to another which the terms 
were suitable to describe, in the manner of which we 
have already seen numerous instances. If the case 
did not already appear too clear for argument, I might 



XXVI. 53, 54.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 119 

add, that, if John, who heard what Jesus said, had 
understood him to be pointing out a prediction ful- 
filled, he would scarcely have omitted to notice so im- 
portant a fact. But in the parallel passage (John xvi. 
32) he has left it entirely out of sight. 

XXVI. 53, 54. 

Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he 
shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels ? 
But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it 
must be ? 

There is no necessity for so interpreting these words 
of Jesus as to make them declare (contrary to what, 
on independent grounds, appears to be the fact) that 
there are passages of the Old Testament foretelling 
the circumstances of affliction and loneliness in which 
he was now placed. That whole plan of Providence 
for the spiritual redemption of the world, which had 
been introduced and entered on in the mission of Moses 
recorded in the Jewish Scriptures, was to be completed, 
accomplished, " fulfilled," in the mission of Jesus. 
(Comp. v. 17, 18.) But Jesus knew that, in order to 
carry into effect the objects of his mission, it was 
necessary that he should surfer and die. His suffer- 
ings and death made an essential part of that instru- 
mentality by which it pleased God to influence the 
minds of men in order to their reformation and salva- 
tion. The Scriptures, and the divine purpose to which 
they related, could not be fulfilled, unless the object of 
Christ's mission were fulfilled ; and that was only to 
be through the agency of his sufferings and death. It 
is in this natural sense that I understand the sentence, 
which, I conceive, is rightly pointed in the edition of 
Griesbach, and which, with that punctuation, reads as 
follows : " Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to 



120 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXVI. 56. 

my father, and he will presently give me more than 
twelve legions of angels \ How then shall the Scrip- 
tures be fulfilled 1 for thus it must be " ; i. e. " thus," 
in this way and no other, through my sufferings and 
by no easier method, is the consummation, to which 
the Scriptures point, to be brought about. 

XXVI. 56. 

All this was done, that the Scriptures of the prophets might 
be fulfilled. 

" All " what 1 Does Matthew mean to say, that all 
the incidents of the scene in the garden, detailed by 
himself in the preceding ten verses, had been specially 
foretold in " the Scriptures of the prophets " 1 It is 
quite obvious that so strict an interpretation must be 
abandoned, and that the most the words can be under- 
stood to mean is, that the fate of Jesus, in its general 
character of being one of suffering, corresponded with 
ancient predictions. But I am satisfied that they do 
not mean so much as that ; and after departing from 
that strictest construction of the words which it is im- 
possible to maintain on any grounds, the question of the 
degree of closeness of that correspondence which the 
Evangelist intended to point out between the words of 
ancient Scripture and the events that had passed be- 
neath his eye, becomes one to be determined by a free 
consideration of the manner in which he may be sup- 
posed to have viewed the subject. 

My own understanding of the matter is this. At 
the time when Matthew wrote, as in earlier times, the 
idea o£ a suffering Messiah was one to the last degree 
repulsive to his unconverted countrymen. " Christ 
crucified " was " to the Jews a stumbling-block." The 
notion of such a person they understood as being in 
plain contradiction to the whole tenor of the Old 



XXVI. 63, 64.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 121 

Testament Scriptures, where the coming Messiah had 
been referred to. Matthew had the best reason to 
know this. In telling the story of his master's deser- 
tion and humiliation, it could not fail to rise to his 
mind. And he naturally and appositely throws in the 
declaration, that what he was relating took place, not 
in opposition to old Scripture, rightly understood, but, 
on the contrary, in order to its fulfilment. Of the 
" Scriptures of the prophets," or teachers, the writings 
of the great prophet, Moses, made incomparably the 
most authoritative part ; and what he had said of the 
" prophet like unto " himself, and the benefactor in 
whom all the nations of the earth were to " be blessed," 
was put in its proper train to be " fulfilled " by the 
transactions which Matthew was now relating. And if 
the writers who had come after Moses had much mis- 
conceived the character of the coming prophet, and had 
overlaid the conception of his spiritual office with the 
trappings of worldly greatness, still it was the teacher 
foretold by Moses that they had intended to describe, 
and it was in fact through a painful earthly experience 
that that highly fated being was to fulfil his destiny. 
Such was the voluntary self-sacrifice of Jesus, — we 
may understand Matthew as saying, — to accomplish 
those Divine purposes to which the ancient dispensa- 
tion related, and opened the way. 

I have commented on these words as words of Mat- 
thew. If we prefer to ascribe them to Jesus, the ap- 
plication of my remarks to that view is easy. 

XXVI. 63, 64. 

The high-priest answered and said unto him, " I adjure thee by 
the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, 
the Son of God." Jesus saith unto him, " Thou hast said ; 
nevertheless, I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son 
of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in 
the clouds of heaven." 
11 



122 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXVII. 9,10. 

Jesus makes the same avowal to the high-priest 
which he had made to his Apostles by " the coasts of 
Ceesarea Philippi" (xvi. 16, 17) ; and adds, in a refer- 
ence, which the high-priest could not understand, to 
that spiritual authority which he was presently to as- 
sume through the establishment of his Gospel : Mean 
and powerless as I seem to stand before you, I shall 
before long be manifested in that sovereignty which 
the Psalmist and the author of Daniel intended to ex- 
tol, when they spoke of the coming Messiah as ad- 
vanced to a seat on God's right hand (Ps. ex. 1), and 
as " coming with the clouds of heaven" (Dan. vii. 13). 

XXVII. 9, 10. 

Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the proph- 
et, saying, " And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the 
price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of 
Israel did value, and gave them for the potter's field, as the 
Lord appointed me." 

The text affords valuable illustration of the sense 
in which the New Testament writers connect events of 
their own time with language of the Old Testament, 
declaring that one has " fulfilled " the other. Matthew 
has related that Judas, having received thirty pieces of 
money as his reward for betraying his master, was 
struck with remorse when he saw that Jesus was sen- 
tenced to death, " and went and hanged himself " ; 
and that " the chief priests," taking the money from 
the temple floor, where he had thrown it, and reflect- 
ing that, after the use which it had served, it ought 
not to be put into the treasury (comp. Deut. xxiii. 18), 
concluded to buy with it a burial-place for strangers. 
And " then was fulfilled" he says, the saying which 
he proceeds to quote, " spoken by Jeremy the prophet." 

But he quoted from memory, and incorrectly, which 



XXVII. 9, 10.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 123 

it is quite impossible to suppose that he would do, if 
he meant to direct the reader's attention to a super- 
natural prediction uttered by an ancient seer, and now 
brought to pass in an event which he was himself re- 
cording. No language resembling that recited by 
Matthew occurs in the prophecy of Jeremiah, as it 
has come down to us. Similar language does occur 
in the book known by the name of Zechariah. (Comp. 
« Lectures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 487, 488.) The writer 
relates (Zech. xi. 12, 13; compare "Lectures," &c., 
Vol. III. pp. 491, 492) that, having asked a recom- 
pense of his public service, he was insulted with a 
mean donation, which, indignant at the disrespect 
shown both to himself and to Jehovah, whose will he 
had declared, he threw back into the public treasury. 
The text, according to the Hebrew, reads thus : — 

" Then I said to them, ; If it seem good in your eyes, 
give me my wages ; if not, keep them.' And they 
weighed for my wages thirty shekels of silver. And 
Jehovah said to me, ' Cast it into the treasury, the 
goodly price at which I was valued by them ! ' And I 
took the thirty shekels of silver, and cast them into 
the house of Jehovah, into the treasury." 

For " treasury," which is a rendering well sustained 
by the etymology, as well as by the connection and by 
ancient versions, the Septuagint reads " foundery." The 
Hebrew word (^V^) is also the present participle of a 
verb signifying he formed, or fashioned, as a potter 
does his ware. And by putting this sense upon it, 
Matthew has prepared the passage for the application 
which he makes. (See above, p. 45.) 

Such I take to be the true explanation of the facts. 
If it is so, Matthew, when he prefaced his quotation 
with the words, " Then was fulfilled," &c., had no idea 
of indicating that it contained a supernatural predic- 



124 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXVII. 9, 10. 

tion ; nor is it possible for a sober interpreter so to 
regard it, for not only is it a narrative of a past trans- 
action, but there is no similarity between it and the 
supposed result, except a similarity partly slight and 
verbal, and partly factitious. As to the reference of 
the words quoted to Jeremiah as their author, it is not 
improbable that passages were ascribed to him in Mat- 
thew's time, which subsequently were incorporated 
into our prophecy of Zechariah ; or perhaps all the 
books of the Later Prophets were cited as the " Book 
of Jeremiah," his book being placed first among them 
in some collections. (" Lectures," &c., Vol. III. pp. 
303, 337 ; comp. p. 236.) To the statement of Jerome 
(Tom. IV. p. 134, edit. Martianay), that in a Hebrew 
copy of an apocryphal Jeremiah, lent him by a Naza- 
rene Jew, he had found the passage word for word as 
quoted by Matthew, I attach no importance. The 
fact may well have been so ; but the natural explana- 
tion of it would be, that Matthew's words had been 
interpolated into the copy of the ancient prophet 
shown to Jerome. One old manuscript, collated by 
Griesbach, reads " Zechariah " for Jeremiah, and two, 
with the Syriac version, omit the prophet's name. 
But, quite obviously, these are but expedients to save 
the Evangelist's plenary inspiration. Some critics 
have been disposed to have recourse to the passage in 
Jeremiah, which relates his purchase of certain land 
from Hanameel (Jer. xxxii. 7-14). And so much as 
this may be true, that the Evangelist, confusing the 
two narratives in his recollection, had taken some 
words of Zechariah, the author of one, and referred 
them to Jeremiah, the author of the other. But such 
a supposition is obviously quite inconsistent with the 
theory of his having designed to quote a supernatural 
prediction, and point out its accomplishment. 



XXVII. 35.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 125 

XXVII. 35. 

And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots ; 
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, 
" They parted my garments among them, and upon my ves- 
ture did they cast lots." 

The quotation is from a poem which has with prob- 
ability been ascribed to David (Ps. xxii. 18). The 
writer, whoever he was, is called in this text a " proph- 
et," by no means in the sense of a foreteller of future 
events, which is but a modern and indefensible inter- 
pretation of the word as used in Scripture; but simply 
in the sense of a writer^ or, more specifically, a poet. 
(See " Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 368 - 370 ; comp. 
Tit. i. 12.) It would seem that no conclusion, relat- 
ing to the construction of language, could be clearer 
or more unquestionable, than that the Psalmist is treat- 
ing of his own sorrows, and not of those of any other 
person in a distant future age. Confining his atten- 
tion to the piece itself, it is impossible that a reader 
should dream of any other sense. Whether the Evan- 
gelist, in taking a sentence from it, and prefacing his 
quotation with the words " that it might be fulfilled," 
&c, meant to put upon it an interpretation so entirely 
different as has been supposed, is a question which a 
reader will be prepared to answer, according to the 
view which he may have seen cause to take of my 
argument on this class of expressions in the preceding 
pages. (See pp. 25 - 33, et al.) I understand the 
Evangelist as simply pointing out the striking coinci- 
dence through which an incident of the crucifixion of 
his Master might be aptly described in the Psalmist's 
words. 

I have thus treated this passage, as if written by 
Matthew, because English readers will look for a note 
upon it in its place. But it was not written by Mat- 
11* 



126 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXVII. 46. 

thew. The whole latter part of the verse, as given in 
our common editions, beginning with the words " that 
it might be fulfilled," is spurious, and as such is elimi- 
nated in Griesbach's edition. In other words, Mat- 
thew made no allusion to the words of the Psalmist 
in this connection. Nor did Mark (xv. 24). Nor did 
Luke (xxiii. 34). John did (xix. 24), in the sense 
which I have above explained. 

The fact is remarkable. If the words of the Psalm- 
ist, with their peculiar verbal coincidence, had in fact 
been a prediction of a circumstance attending the cru- 
cifixion of Jesus, is it supposable that Mark and Luke 
would have neglected to put them to their proper 
use 1 Especially, can it be supposed that Matthew 
would have neglected to do so, who is so fond of en- 
livening his narrative with references to the Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures % 

XXVII. 46. 

Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, " Eli, Eli, lama sabach- 
thani ? " that is to say, " My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ? " 

These words are taken from the same composition 
as the quotation last commented upon (Ps. xxii. 1). 
They are in the original Hebrew, except the verb 
(" hast thou forsaken "), which is Syriac, the sentence 
being constructed in that mixed dialect which was in 
use in Judea in the Evangelist's time. (See " Lec- 
tures," &c., Vol. I. p. 4, note * ) 

We easily clothe our thoughts and emotions in lan- 
guage supplied by memory, even when we should be 
unwilling to admit that our state of mind was the 
same as that by which the language was originally 
prompted. (Matt, xxvii. 43 ; comp. Ps. xxii. 8.) At 
all events, nothing is more natural or common than to 



XXVII. 46.] GOSPEL OF MATTHEW. 127 

express an emotion of one's own in language which, 
under similar circumstances, has been used by some 
other person. And that Jesus should have so used 
the language of the Psalmist, if for the moment his 
soul had been overshadowed, like the Psalmist's, by a 
sense of wretchedness and desertion, would be a fact 
requiring no further explanation. But as I do not 
think that this was the state of mind of Jesus at this 
time, I do not regard this as the right explanation of 
his quotation from the Psalm. I believe that, in utter- 
ing the first sentence of that composition, he did not 
mean to adopt that sentence alone as an expression of 
his feelings, but that he intended so to adopt the com- 
position taken as a -whole. It begins, it is true, with 
a wail of misery (Ps. xxii. 1-18). But it passes into 
a strain of confiding supplication (19-21), and ends 
with an exulting shout of triumph (22-31). As Je- 
sus hung upon the cross, his revilers had mocked him 
in language taken from one of its verses (Matt, xxvii. 
43). Possibly their allusion reminded him of it, and 
caused him to ponder its whole sense, so suitable to 
his circumstances of apparent abandonment by his 
Father, but of real glory and close and blissful com- 
munion with him. And, in uttering its first words, 
he at once recalls to his own mind its animating sense, 
and intimates to the by-standers that if in appearance 
his outward affliction, so too his inward joys, were 
like those of that ancient sufferer, beloved of God, 
who had closed his lament with such words as these : 
" All the ends of the world shall remember and turn 
unto the Lord ; and all the kindreds of the nations 
shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the 
Lord's, and he is the Governor among the nations. 
They shall come and shall declare his right- 
eousness unto a people that shall be born, that he 
hath done this." (Ps. xxii. 27-31.) 



128 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXVIII. 20. 

XXVIII. 20. 
Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. 

" The end of the world," or of the age, (?? o-wreXela 
rod at&W?,) is the same phrase which was used by the 
disciples of Jesus when they asked him (Matt. xxiv. 3) 
respecting the tokens of his " coming, and of the end 
of the world," and is to be understood here in the 
same sense. (See above, pp. 78, 111.) The end of the 
age is the winding up of the Jewish dispensation. 
Jesus promises his Apostles his presence, encourage- 
ment, and support in their labors to bring the old 
order of things to a close, and to introduce the new one. 



SECTION II. 

GOSPEL OF MARK. 



I. 1. 

Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 

See above, pp. 1, 50-53. 

I. 2. 

As it is written in the Prophets, " Behold, I send my messenger 
before thy face, which shall prepare thy way ; the voice 
of one crying in the wilderness, ; Prepare ye the way of 
the Lord, make his paths straight.' " 

The first part of this quotation is inexactly taken 
from Malachi (iii. 1); the second from the pseudo- 
Isaiah (xl. 3). To meet this fact, the later manu- 
scripts, followed by the earlier printed editions, appear 
to have corrupted the Evangelist's text. According 
to the best evidence which we have (see Griesbach's 



1.43,44.] GOSPEL OF MARK. 129 

critical edition, ad Zoc), Mark wrote, not "as it is 
written in the prophets," but " as it is written in 
Isaiah the prophet." His memory deceived him, and 
he supposed the whole of what he quoted to be taken 
from Isaiah. There is nothing extraordinary in this, 
if rhetorical embellishment, as I maintain, was the 
object in such quotations. But if the Evangelist had 
intended any thing so important as a reference to a 
supernatural prediction fulfilled, is it possible to con- 
ceive that he would have allowed himself in such a 
negligence % Is it possible to imagine him to have 
argued that an ancient writer, by supernatural fore- 
sight, had used certain words, which the event had 
now fulfilled, when he had not ascertained that that 
writer had used those words, and when, in fact, he had 
not used them \ 

For remarks on the quotations, which are also sepa- 
rately made by Matthew, see above, pp. 48, 49, 72, 73. 

I. 11. 

There came a voice from heaven, saying, " Thou art my be- 
loved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 

See above, pp. 50-53. 

I. 14, 15. 

Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom 
of God, and saying, " The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom 
of God is at hand : repent ye, and believe the gospel." 

See above, pp. 46-48, 56. 

I. 43, 44. 

He straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away ; and 
saith unto him, " See thou say nothing to any man : but go 
thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleans- 
ing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony 
unto them." 

See above, p. 62. 



130 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 10. 

II. 10. 

The Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins. 

For remarks on the origin and force of the phrase 
Son of man, see above, pp. 65 - 68. 

II. 26. 
In the days of Abiathar the high-priest. 
See above, p. 75. — According to the history 
(1 Sam. xxi. 1-6) this transaction took place in the 
high-priesthood of Ahimelech, Abiathar's father. Per- 
haps Mark's memory was in fanlt ; perhaps, instead of 
" in the days," we should render in the presence, of 
Abiathar ; perhaps we should understand Mark as 
using a form of reference, as if he had said, " in that 
passage of the history which relates to Abiathar." 
So our Saviour, when he says, " Moses at the bush " 
(Mark xii. 26, Luke xx. 37), is understood as referring, 
under that phraseology, to those passages of Scripture 
where the incident of " The Bush " is treated of. See 
Michaelis's " Introduction," &c., Part I. chap. iv. § 5. 

IV. 11, 12. 

Unto them that are without, all these things are done in para- 
bles ; that seeing they may see, and not perceive, &c. 

Who can doubt that Matthew and Mark meant to 
make the same application of the language of old 
Scripture 1 Yet when Matthew uses the words (xiii. 
14, 15), it is with the apparently formal introduction, 
" In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which 
saith." See above, pp. 80, 81. 

VI. 15. 

Others said, that it is Elias ; and others said, that it is a prophet, 
or as one of the prophets. 

See above, pp. 85, 86. 



VIII. 27-29.] GOSPEL OF MAEK. 131 

VII. 6. 

Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites. 

See above, p. 84. 

VII. 10. 

Moses said, " Honor thy father and thy mother." 

See above, p. 83. — For " Moses said," we read in 
the parallel passage in Matthew, " God commanded." 

VIII. 11. 

The Pharisees came forth, and began to question with him, 
seeking of him a sign from heaven. 

See above, pp. 79, 80. — Mark omits our Lord's 
reference, reported by Matthew (xii. 40, 41, xvi. 1 - 4), 
to " the sign of the prophet Jonas." This fact sug- 
gests the observation, applicable to numerous other 
cases, that, as the Evangelists wrote independently of 
each other, and for different readers, it may be pre- 
sumed that, if references made to the Old Testament 
by any one Evangelist had been adduced by him as 
in the nature of proof, and not merely of illustration, 
the same references would have been found also in the 
other Evangelists, when the same connection, whether 
of narrative or of discourse, made it suitable. 

VIII. 27-29. 

He asked his disciples, saying unto them, " Whom do men say 

that I am ? " And Peter answereth and saith unto him, 

" Thou art the Christ." 

See above, pp. 1-4. — I have already remarked 
(p. 52) that Mark omits from Peter's declaration the 
phrase " Son of the living God," recorded by Matthew, 
which it is scarcely credible that he should have done, 
if, instead of being merely equivalent to Messiah, it 



132 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VIII. 38 -IX. 1. 

meant so much more than that title as has been com- 
monly supposed. 

VIII. 38 -IX. 1. 

Of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he cometh 

in the glory of his Father, with the holy angels There 

be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of 
death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with 
power. 

See above, pp. 88-91. 

IX. 4. 

There appeared unto them Elias, with Moses ; and they were 
talking with Jesus. 

See above, pp. 91-93. 

IX. 7. 

This is my beloved Son ; hear him. 
See above, p. 94. 

IX. 12, 13. 

He answered and told them, u Elias verily cometh first, and 
restoreth all things ; and how it is written of the Son of Man, 
that he must suffer many things, and be set at naught. But 
I say unto you, that Elias is indeed come, and they have 
done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of 
him." 

See above, p. 95. — "iif is written of the Son of 
Man," &c. For the meaning of this language, see 
above, pp. 117, 118, where " it is written" is shown to 
be equivalent to " it is determined " (Luke xxii. 22). 
So in the text of Mark before us, our Lord, referring 
to the death of John, says, " They have done unto him 
whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him." But 
where else than in the counsels of God was it ever 
" written " in what manner John should die \ 



XL 7.] GOSPEL OF MARK. 133 

IX. 43, 44. 

The fire that never shall be quenched, where their worm dieth 
not, and the fire is not quenched. 

See above, pp. 60, 61. 

X. 3. 



He answered and said unto them, " What did Moses command 
you ? " 

See above, pp. 96, 97. 

X. 47. 

He began to cry out, and say, " Jesus, thou Son of David, 
have mercy on me." 

For the origin of the idea prevalent among the Jews 
that the Messiah, the prophet like unto Moses (Deut. 
xviii. 15), would be one of King David's posterity, see 
« Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 377-386; Vol. III. pp. 
18 - 21 ; Vol. IV. pp. 306, 307. But Mark nowhere 
says, either in his own person or in that of his Master, 
that Jesus was a descendant from David. (Comp. 
above, pp. 5 et seq.) 

XI. 7. 

They brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him, 
and he sat upon him. 

See above, pp. 99-101. — In relating this incident, 
Matthew and John (xii. 14-16) embellish their nar- 
rative with a quotation from Zechariah. Neither 
Mark nor Luke (xix. 29 et seq.) does so. It is to the 
last degree difficult to suppose that they would have 
omitted the quotation, had they regarded it as having 
the prophetical significance imagined by later inter- 
preters. 

12 



134 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XL 9. 

XL 9. 

They that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, 
" Hosanna ! blessed is he that cometh in the name of the 
Lord." 

See above, p. 102. 

XL 17. 

He taught, saying unto them, " Is it not written, ' My house 
shall be called of all nations the house of prayer' ? But ye 
have made it a den of thieves." 

See above, p. 102. 

XII. 10, 11. 

Have ye not read this Scripture, " The stone which the builders 
rejected is become the head of the corner ; this was the 
Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes " ? 

See above, pp. 103, 104. 

XII. 26, 27. 
Have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God 
spake unto him, &c. 

See above, pp. 104-106. Comp. Rom. xi. 2, where 
the true translation is " in Elias " (iv 'HXta) ; and Jahn, 
"Einleit. in das A. T. 5 " § 102. 

XII. 31. 

There is none other commandment greater than these. \ 
See above, p. 106. 

XII. 35. 

How say the scribes that Christ is the son of David ? 
See above, pp. 107-109. 

XIII. 14. 

When ye shall see the abomination of desolation standing where 
it ought not (let him that readeth understand). 

See above, pp. Ill, 112. 



XV. 28.] GOSPEL OF MAEK. 135 

XIII. 24-26. 

In those days shall they see the Son of Man coming in 

the clouds. 

See above, pp. 112, 113. 

XIV. 21. 

The Son of Man indeed goeth, as it is written of him. 
See above, pp. 117, 118. 

XIV. 27. 

It is written, " I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall 
be scattered." 

See above, pp. 118, 119. 

XIV. 49. 
The Scriptures must be fulfilled. 

See above, pp. 119, 120. 

XIV. 61, 62. 

The high-priest asked him, and said unto him, " Art thou the 
Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? " And Jesus said, " lam": 
and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of 
power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. 

See above, pp. 121, 122. — The passage illustrates 
the equivalence of the three titles, Christ, Son of the 
Blessed (that is, Son of God), and Son of Man, See 
above, pp. 50-53, 65-68. 

XV. 28. 

And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, " And he was num- 
bered with the transgressors." 

The reference is to Isaiah liii. 12. (See above, pp. 
17 et seq., and comp. Luke xxii. 37.) Neither Matthew 
nor John makes this quotation. 



136 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XV. 34. 

XV. 34. 

Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, " Eloi, Eloi, lama sa- 
bachthani ? " 

See above, pp. 126, 127. Mark reports Jesus as using 
a Syriac form for " My God." Eli (in Matthew) is pure 
Hebrew. Eloi occurs in the Septuagint (Judges v. 5). 



SECTION III. 

GOSPEL OF LUKE. 



I. 5. 

A certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia. 

See 1 Chron. xxiv. 5, 10. 

I. 17. 

He shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn 
the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient 
to the wisdom of the just ; to make ready a people prepared 
for the Lord. 

Mourning over the sinful practices of his time, 
Malachi had said (iv. 6) that it seemed as if Jehovah 
would have to send another Elijah, another restorer of 
the Law, to " turn the heart of the fathers to the chil- 
dren, and the heart of the children to their fathers." 
The angel who spoke with Zechariah is here repre- 
sented as applying the words, in an inaccurate quota- 
tion of them (comp. Mai. iii. 1), to John, the forerun- 
ner of the new Christian dispensation. John, with a 
spirit and power like that of the great ancient reform- 
er, was to be the Lord's herald in introducing the com- 
ing kingdom. (See above, pp. 74, 75, and comp, 
" Lectures," &c, Vol. III. p. 502.) 



I. 19] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 137 

I. 19. 

The angel answering said unto him, " I am Gabriel, that stand 
in the presence of God, and am sent to speak unto thee, and 
to show thee these glad tidings." 

" The mythology of a divine council of seven angels 
is believed to have had its origin in the attendance with 
which the Persian king, Darius Hystaspis, surrounded 
his throne. (Eich. c Einleit. in die Apokryph. Schrift.,' 
s. 408, Anm. h.) But however this might be, it was a 
doctrine of the Persians (Bertholdt, 'Einleit.,' § 582; 
Corrodi, ' Versuch,' Band I. ss. 89-91), with which 
people the Jews had no intimate relations till the time 
of the capture of Babylon by Cyrus ; and several 
generations must be supposed to have passed before 
the Jews incorporated into their own popular faith an 
article so peculiar, and so foreign to their national the- 
ology." ("Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. p. 363.) The 
Jews brought with them from Babylon the names of 
the seven chief angels (comp. Apoc. viii. 2), on their 
return from the captivity. So testify the Rabbins with 
one accord. (See Wetsten. " Nov. Test." in Luc. i. 
19.) The later Jewish books present the names of 
four of them ; viz. Gabriel (Dan. viii. 16, ix. 21), 
Michael (Dan. x. 13, 21, xii. 1; comp. Jude 9, Apoc. 
xii. 7), Raphael (Tobit iii. 17, v. 4, viii. 2, ix. 1, 5, 
xii. 15), and Uriel (2 Esd. iv. 1, v. 20). 

And now, in his narrative of events connected with 
the birth of Jesus, the Evangelist Luke relates that 
the miraculous apparition which foretold to Zacharias 
the birth of his son " said unto him, ' I am Gabriel, 
that stand in the presence of God.' " How are we to 
understand this I Are we to take it as corroborative 
of the truth of that doctrine concerning angels which 
the Jews, in the feeble days of their exile, had imbibed 
from a Pagan source 1 Are we to consider God as 
12* 



138 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [1.19. 

here confirming the dreams of the Persians \ Does 
the language of Luke convert the speculations of the 
times of and after Darius Hystaspis into articles of 
Christian faith, and establish the doctrine that there is 
a superhuman being, privileged to " stand in the pres- 
ence of God," and bearing the name of Gabriel f 

We naturally think, in the first place, of the evi- 
dence upon which the knowledge of this transaction, 
with all its particulars, has reached us. Zacharias 
was the only eye and ear witness to it ; and him it is 
not in the slightest degree probable that Luke ever 
saw. At the time to which it belongs, Zacharias was 
already " well stricken in years " (Luke i. 7), so as to 
have given up the hope of posterity. It was thirty 
years after that, before Jesus began to call disciples, 
and we do not know even that Luke became a disciple 
during his personal ministry. (Comp. Luke i. 1, 2.) 
The account must have been transmitted from Zacha- 
rias to him through intermediate hands (comp. Luke 
i. 65) ; and we can scarcely rely so confidently on its 
having been transmitted with verbal exactness, as to 
feel certain that the words " I am Gabriel " were ac- 
tually used by the supernatural appearance, when that 
part of the narrative would, in the course of trans- 
mission, be so likely to take such a form, from the 
current superstition respecting the hierarchy of angels. 
And this idea gains strength, when we remember that 
the Evangelist Matthew, who may be supposed to have 
been better acquainted than Luke with the mother of 
Jesus, does not name Gabriel in his account of these 
transactions. (Matt. i. 20, 24; ii. 13.) Luke says 
(i. 65, 66) that " all these sayings were noised abroad 
throughout all the hill-country of Judea ; and all they 
that heard them laid them up in their hearts." May 
we not understand him as here indicating the source 



I. 19.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 139 

of his information ; viz. common report, which always 
improves upon a story I 

But let us suppose the words, after floating in tra- 
dition for more than half a century, to have been at 
length recorded by Luke precisely as they had been 
spoken to Zacharias, what inference is it necessary to 
deduce from them in respect to the existence of a su- 
perhuman being, named Gabriel ] Undoubtedly, it 
would be altogether extraordinary, and contrary to the 
doctrine of chances, that a heathen or even a Jewish 
speculation should have hit so exactly right as to guess 
that very name of a superhuman being which revela- 
tion afterwards declared to be his true name. Very 
clear and strong evidence would seem to be requisite 
to establish a fact so singular. 

I take it to be quite unnecessary to resort to so vio- 
lent an interpretation of the words, even supposing 
them to be recorded precisely as they were spoken by 
the supernatural messenger. Ex vi termini, in the 
Old and New Testament sense, an angel meant simply 
a messenger, an errand-bearer, any medium of commu- 
nication or action whatever, and this equally between 
man and man or between God and man. Such is the 
meaning of the corresponding Hebrew and Greek 
words (77K/D and ayyeXos). The angel, or instru- 
mentality, may be inanimate, sentient, or human, or 
it may be a superhuman manifestation or creation, 
whether temporary or permanent. (See " Lectures," 
&c, Vol. I. p. 104.) In the case before us, a super- 
human messenger bore God's errand ; and, taking the 
words " I am Gabriel " to have been used by him just 
as they are recorded, I understand the natural con- 
struction of them to be, that he used a language sig- 
nificant to Zacharias, as being borrowed from the cur- 
rent conceptions of the time. When he said, " I am 



140 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 26. 

Gabriel (or a Gabriel), that stand in the presence of 
God," it is as if he had said, I am what you under- 
stand Gabriel to be ; I am a highly trusted minister 
(comp. 1 Kings x. 8, xii. 6, Job ii. 1, Dan. vii. 10) 
to make known and execute God's declaration and 
will. The words " that stand in the presence of God " 
(7rapeaTr)fcdo<;), I would rather render " that have stood" 
&c. ; signifying, " that have just come from God, and 
have my instructions directly from him." — Gabriel 
means the power of God. " This is Elias which was 
for to come," said our Lord of John the Baptist (Matt, 
xi. 14), because John was performing the office as- 
signed by the popular belief to Elias. So this mani- 
festation was Gabriel, because it bore God's message, 
as a being called Gabriel was supposed to do. 

I. 26. 

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God 
unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth. 

It is not related that the apparition to Mary called 
itself by the name of Gabriel, as that to Zacharias had 
done. But the Evangelist, or those from whom he 
derived the account, associating the two events to- 
gether, naturally gave to one appearance the name 
said to have been claimed by the other. This would 
the more readily be done, as the angel that spoke to 
Mary also informed her of the condition of the wife 
of Zacharias (i. 36). — " The angel Gabriel was sent 
from God" to Mary; that is, there was an appear- 
ance to Mary like what there had been to Zacharias 
(11-19). 

I. 32. 

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest ; 
and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father 



I. 35.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 141 

David ; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ; 
and of his kingdom there shall be no end. 

With our knowledge of the office and authority of 
Jesus, as he afterwards disclosed them, we perceive 
that they are not accurately described in these words. 
But it was the only kind of description of them which 
Mary, entertaining the current views of the expected 
Messiah, would at this time have understood, and 
therefore the fittest to be addressed to her ; — ■ if, in- 
deed, we are not to suppose the language of the angel 
to have suffered some change, conforming it to the 
current opinions, in its transmission through many 
years, and perhaps through many hands, from Mary 
to Luke. 

I. 35. 

Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born shall be 
called the Son [rather, a son] of God. 

The angel, if correctly reported, may seem here to 
have indicated the miraculous conception of Jesus as 
a reason for his being called Son of God (comp. iii. 38), 
additional to that which, with the Jews, had made that 
title equivalent to Messiah. (See above, pp. 50-53.) 
Matthew (i. 18-21) gives no such explanation of the 
name. It may have been more suitable to be com- 
municated to Luke's Gentile readers (who were accus- 
tomed to divine generations in their own mythology) 
than to the Jews for whom Matthew wrote. On the 
other hand, there were instances of supernatural birth 
in Jewish history (Gen. xvii. 17 ; Judges xiii. 2, 24; 
1 Sam. i. 5, 20), without the appellation Son of God 
being made consequent upon it. 

On the whole, however, I think it is a mistake to 
suppose that the angel was here referring to, and giv- 
ing an additional explanation of, the peculiar title, 



142 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 46-55. 

Son of God, by which Jesus, as Messiah, was after- 
wards to be known. I suppose that he was not allud- 
ing to that title, but merely answering the question of 
Mary. Mary asks, How can I have a son, who will 
be a son of no man (i, 34) % The angel replies, Your 
son will be a son of God, who by supernatural power 
creates him. " He shall be called " (fcXTjOrjaerai) often 
means simply he shall be (Is. lvi. 7 ; Matt. v. 9, 19 ; 
Luke ii. 23 ; xv. 19 ; 1 Cor. xv. 9). But waving this, 
we may render the word (still regarding it as an an- 
swer to the question of Mary) he may be called, you 
may properly call him a son of God, since he is to be 
no son of a man. 

I. 46-55. 

Mary said, " My soul doth magnify the Lord As he 

spake to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed, for ever." 

Mary's hymn of thanksgiving is in great part a 
collection of expressions from the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures, which she applies to herself. (Comp. 1 Sam 
ii. 1, 3; Ps. xxxiv. 3; xxxv. 9; Gen. xxx. 13; Judg 
v. 24; 1 Sam. i. 11 ; 2 Kings xiv. 26; Ps. xxv. 18 
cii. 17; cxi. 9; cxxvi. 2; Gen. xvii. 7; Exod. xx 
6; Ps. ciii. 17; xxxiii. 10; lxxvii. 15; lxxxvi. 13: 
xcviii. 1; Is. xl. 10; Hi. 10; 1 Sam. ii. 7, 8; Job v 
11; xii. 18; Ps. cxiii. 7; Is. lxvi. 2; Ps. xcviii. 3; 
Is. xxx. 18 ; lv. 5 ; Jer. xxxi. 3, 20.) The fact is 
important in connection with the inquiry in which we 
are now engaged concerning the use made in the New 
Testament of the Old Testament writers ; as it shows 
how natural it was to a pious Jew to give utterance 
and illustration to his own thoughts in language bor- 
rowed from the worthies of ancient times. 



II. 22-24.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 143 

I. 70. 

As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have 
been since the world began. 

By the " world " (alcov) I understand the time of the 
Jewish dispensation. (See above, pp. 78, 79.) Zacha- 
rias correctly interpreted the language of " the holy 
prophets " of the post-Mosaic period, when he under- 
stood them, in their imperfect apprehension of the office 
of the coming " prophet," as expressing the expectation 
that, by the agency of a descendant of David (i. 69), 
the people would be saved from their enemies, and 
from the hand of all them that hated them (71). 

I. 73-75. 

The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, that he would 
grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of 
our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and 
righteousness before him, all our days. 

The reference appears to be to Genesis xxii. 17. 

I. 76. 

Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways. 

Here language of Malachi (iii. 1 ; comp. " Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. III. p. 501, note), which appears to 
have originally denoted the Messiah, is applied to 
John the Baptist. (Comp. Matt. xi. 10 ; Mark i. 2 ; 
Luke vii. 27.) 

II. 22-24. 

And when the days of their purification, according to the Law 
of Moses, were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, 
to present him to the Lord ; (as it is written in the Law of 
the Lord, " Every male that openeth the womb shall be called 
holy to the Lord " ;) and to offer a sacrifice according to that 
which is said in the Law of the Lord, A pair of turtle-doves, 
or two young pigeons." 



144 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 4-6. 

The regulations here referred to are found in dif- 
ferent parts of the Mosaic code. (Comp. Exod. xiii. 
2; xxii. 29; xxxiv. 19; Numb. iii. 13; viii. 16, 17; 
Lev. xii. 2, 6, 8.) 

III. 4-6. 

As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, 
saying, " The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 4 Pre- 
pare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every 
valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be 
brought low ; and the crooked shall be made straight, and 
the rough ways shall be made smooth ; and all flesh shall see 
the salvation of God. " 

Luke extends the quotation from Isaiah (xl. 3-5) 
further than had been done by Matthew (iii. 3) or by 
Mark (i. 3), and in the last clause he follows the Sep- 
tuagint version. For remarks on the quotation, and 
the import of its application to the case of John, see 
above, pp. 48, 49. In respect to that part of it which 
is added by Luke (iii. 5), it is especially plain that he 
could only have intended to make a rhetorical accom- 
modation of the words of the pseudo-Isaiah, and by 
no means to adduce them as a prediction fulfilled in 
John. What improvement of the highways was made 
in the time, and at the bidding, of the Baptist ? 

III. 22. 

A voice came from heaven, which said, " Thou art my beloved 
Son ; in thee I am well pleased." 

See above, pp. 50-53. 

III. 23-38. 

And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being 
(as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of 

Heli, which was the son of Adam, which was the son 

of God. 



in. 23-38.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 145 

For my views of the purpose of Luke, as well as 
of Matthew, in recording the genealogies of Jesus, or 
rather of his mother's husband, see above, pp. 5-16. 
Matthew (i. 2) has traced the line only from Abraham. 
Luke (iii. 34 - 38), transcribing from Genesis (v. 3 - 
32, xi. 10-26), deduces it from the origin of the 
human race. But what is more material is, that in 
two thirds of that portion of the genealogy which 
covers the same ground (for in what relates to the 
period from Abraham to David they agree), the ac- 
counts of the two Evangelists are at irreconcilable 
variance. Matthew says (i. 12, 16) that Joseph was 
the son of one Jacob, and through him descended from 
Zerubbabel, the prince of the Jews in the time of Cy- 
rus. (Comp. Ez. iii. 2.) Luke (iii. 23 - 27) agrees that 
he was of the posterity of Zerubbabel, but through a 
line of ancestors so entirely different from that speci- 
fied by Matthew, that in no one instance do the two 
Evangelists give the same name. From Salathiel, 
father of Zerubbabel, to King David, they diverge 
again. The line of descent, according to Matthew 
(i. 6-12), was the royal line, through Solomon and 
his successors on the Jewish throne, ending with Je- 
choniah, whom he represents as Salathiel's father ; 
while Luke (iii. 27-31) declares Salathiel to have 
been son of one Neri, and through him descended, by 
a parentage of otherwise unknown names, not from 
Solomon, but from Nathan, another son of David and 
Bathsheba. (2 Sam. v. 14 ; 1 Chron. iii. 5.) 

The commentators have thought it necessary to har- 
monize the genealogies of Matthew and Luke. The 
most approved way of doing this has been to repre- 
sent Luke (iii. 27-31) as giving, from David, the 
natural descent of Salathiel, and Matthew (i. 6-11) as 
tracing the lineage of Jechoniah, who is supposed to 
13 



146 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 23-38. 

have taken Salathiel (i. 12; comp. 1 Chron. iii. 17, 
19, Jer. xxii. 30) for his adopted son ; while, from 
Salathiel's son, Zembbabel, down, it is proposed to 
understand Matthew (i. 13-16) as stating the parent- 
age of Joseph, and Luke (iii. 23 -27) -that of Mary, 
it being thought that Joseph might be called the son 
of Eli (23) as having married his daughter. 

If this hypothesis is correct, — if Jesus was no 
otherwise a son of David than as being a descendant 
from him through a Jewish mother, — then he was 
scarcely a son of David in the sense of the Old Testa- 
ment writers who are relied on for that representa- 
tion. I formerly thought (see " Lowell Lectures," 
&c., Vol. II. p. 361) that this exposition of Luke's 
genealogy might be maintained, though plainly subject 
to the objection of having been constructed to meet 
the supposed difficulties of the case. On more full 
reflection, however, the conjectures which it involves 
appear to me to be too violent. I will not say that 
the objections to the scheme are conclusive. But the 
arguments for it fall short of satisfying my mind. 
And the reader of what I have written on Matthew's 
genealogy has observed that I find no difficulty in 
leaving the two passages unreconciled. 

Though the Jews of the age of the publication of 
the Gospel expected their Messiah to be of the pos- 
terity of King David, the Evangelists Mark and John 
did not esteem it worth their while to say any thing 
of the manner in which he might be considered to 
sustain that relation. For some reason, as, perhaps, to 
rid themselves of a cavil of unbelieving Jews, Matthew 
and Luke looked at the extant genealogies with refer- 
ence to that point. Matthew found one in which was 
traced from King David the descent of " Joseph, the 
husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus " (Matt. 



III. 23-38.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 147 

i. 16). Luke found another, in which was traced in 
a different way the descent from David of Joseph, the 
" supposed " (Luke iii. 23) father of Jesus. But both 
the Evangelists tell us, at the same time, distinctly 
and circumstantially, that of that Joseph, son of David, 
Jesus, their master, was not the son. If any for whom 
they wrote believed otherwise, rejecting the narrative 
of the miraculous conception (as some of the early 
Christians did), for such persons an account of the 
parentage of Joseph (so far as it appeared credible) 
would be interesting, as being equally an account of 
the parentage of Jesus. But whosoever believed what 
we find in Matthew (i. 18-25) and Luke (i. 26-38) 
of the circumstances of the birth of Jesus, to him it 
would be a matter of less concern how or whether 
Joseph, his mother's betrothed, was descended from 
the ancient kings. 

As I view the case, God had never made known 
that the coming Messiah, the " Prophet," should be of 
the posterity of David ; and therefore, whether Jesus 
was in fact descended from that monarch or not, it 
was not requisite to the proof of Jesus's Messiahship 
to show that he was thus descended. Matthew and 
Luke, however, through a natural curiosity respecting 
the origin of that family of Joseph, of which their 
master had been a member, and very probably for 
more special reasons, such as I have hinted at, sought 
for genealogies of Mary's husband. They made their 
search, as they wrote their Gospels, independently of 
each other. They founds two lists, as it is not at all 
surprising that they should^ which did not agree to- 
gether. And such as they found them, they set them 
down ; — in good faith, but, not improbably, with 
small assurance in their own minds of the absolute 
correctness of documents so ancient. Such as they 



148 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 17-21. 

were, those interested in the history of Jesus might 
conveniently find them in their narratives, to serve 
such use as might be thought fit. 

IV. 17-21. 

He found the place where it was written, " The spirit of the 
Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the 
Gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the. broken- 
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering 
of sight to the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised ; 

to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." And he 

began to say unto them, " This day is this Scripture fulfilled 
in your ears." 

The quotation is from the pseudo-Isaiah (lxi. 1, 2), 
though not made with exactness. The words " to 
heal the broken-hearted," appear not to have been 
written by Luke. (See Griesbach, " Nov. Test." ad 
loc.) The clause, " and recovering of sight to the 
blind," is in the Septuagint version, but not in the 
Hebrew. The word " bruised," or oppressed (D* V^H)? 
for bound, seems to be taken from the similar passage 
in the third preceding chapter (Is. lviii. 6). The He- 
brew, " he hath anointed me " ('ilfc H^p), might be 
strictly rendered, he hath made me a Messiah, and the 
Greek (expiae //.e), he hath made me a Christ. 

When our Saviour, after reading these words, said, 
" This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears," he 
did not mean to declare that the writer, from whom 
he quoted them, had predicted in them his advent and 
ministry. Any one who will look at them in their 
original connection will see. that they have no mean- 
ing of that kind. It is clear that the writer is speak- 
ing of himself, and of himself alone. (See " Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 266, 267.) Nor does Jesus 
put any different construction upon his language. 
What Jesus says is, that the words which the ancient 



IV. 17-21.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 149 

writer used respecting his own labors, he, Jesus, may 
properly apply to himself. That Scripture, originally 
descriptive of another person, was now " fulfilled," 
filled out, (comp. John iv. 37,) in him who was about 
to offer a remedy for every moral evil. 

A criticism of Dr. Sykes upon this passage is so 
well expressed, as to tempt me to transcribe it at length. 
The fact that that learned writer (erroneously, as I 
think, see « Lectures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 235 - 238) 
supposes Isaiah to have been the author of the words 
quoted, makes no difference as to the bearing of his 
argument on the point now in question. 

" The Scripture of Isaiah was that day fulfilled no 
otherwise than as Jesus in fact did preach the accepta- 
ble year of the Lord in one sense, as Isaiah had done 
before him in another sense. Not that our Saviour 
meant any double completion of prophecies ; but he 
applied or accommodated the words of Isaiah to the 
present occasion ; and they were equally true in both 
instances, in that which the prophet used them, and 
in that which Jesus used them : and consequently the 
term fulfilled does not signify a designed event ac- 
complished, or that The Messiah was in the intention 
of Providence to preach upon these words in the syna- 
gogue at Nazareth, but only this, that the words of 
Isaiah are this day verified, 

" The reason why I conclude this to be a mere ac- 
commodation only is, that Isaiah speaks of such a 
day, wherein the Jews were to build up the old wastes, 
to raise up the former devastations, to repair the waste 
cities, the desolations of many generations, ch. lxi. 4. 
What has this to do with the appearance of another 
sort of liberty ; with a freedom from captivity to 
which the repairs of cities that have long lain waste 
can have no manner of relation % Jesus preached up 
13 * 



150 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 25-27. 

a kingdom of a spiritual nature ; a kingdom which 
was not of this world ; and consequently such a one 
in which there was no need of fenced cities and walled 
towns for the security of his subjects. The deliver- 
ance which he preached, was to such as were captives 
to sin and death ; and the acceptable year was that 
in which the Redeemer was to arise to the people of 
God. The words of Isaiah were very proper to make 
the subject of his discourse upon, because they suited 
the present purpose : and he used them not by way 
of argument or proof that he was designed in those 
words, but only took occasion to speak to the point 
he had in view from those words." (" Essay on 
the Truth of the Christian Religion," edit. 2d, pp. 
263-265.) 

IV. 25-27. 

Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the 

heaven was shut up three years and six months And 

many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the proph- 
et, and none of them was cleansed, saving JNaaman the 
Syrian. 

Probably some tradition authorized this reckoning 
of three years and a half for the drought in the time 
of Elijah, as we find it also in the Epistle of James 
(v. 17). According to the history, there was a fall of 
rain in the third year (1 Kings xviii. 1, 45). — To illus- 
trate a principle and habit of character and action 
(viz. that a prophet's sphere is not apt to be about his 
own home), Jesus alludes to two familiar anecdotes in 
an ancient Jewish book. The illustrations were equally 
forcible, whatever might be the authority of that book 
as a trustworthy record of facts. To maintain the 
contrary, would be to say that our Lord could not 
properly draw conclusions from the stories of the 
Prodigal Son, the Unjust Judge, the Penitent Publi- 
can, or the man who hired laborers into his vineyard. 



VII. 27.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 151 

IV. 41. 

Devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, " Thou 
art the Son of God." And he, rebuking them, suffered them 
not to speak : for they knew that he was Christ. 

Here the phrases " Son of God " and " Christ " ap- 
pear as synonymous and convertible. (See above, pp. 
50-53.) 

V. 14. 

He charged him to tell no man : but go and shew thyself to the 
priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses com- 
manded, for a testimony unto them. 

See above, p. 62. 

VI. 3, 4. 

Jesus, answering them, said, " Have ye not read so much as 
this, what David did, when himself was an hungred, and 
they which were with him ; how he went into the house of 
God, and did take and eat the shew-bread, and gave also to 
them that were with him ; which is not lawful to eat but 
for the priests alone ? " 

See above, p. 75. 

VI. 20. 

He lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, " Blessed be 
ye poor ; for yours is the kingdom of God." 

See above, p. 56. 

VII. 22. 

Then Jesus, answering, said unto them, " Go your way, and tell 
John what things ye have seen and heard ; how that the blind 
see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, 
the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached." 

See above, p. 70. 

VII. 27. 

This is he of whom it is written, " Behold, I send my messenger 
before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee." 

See above, p. 72. 



152 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VIII. 10. 

VIII. 10. 

Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of 
God : but to others in parables ; that seeing they might not 
see, and hearing they might not understand. 



See above, p. 80. 



IX. 7, 8, 19. 



It was said of some, that John was risen from the dead ; and of 
some, that Elias had appeared ; and of others, that one of 
the old prophets was risen again. 

They, answering, said, " John the Baptist : but some say, Elias ; 
and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again.'" 

See above, p. 85. 

IX. 20. 

He said unto them, " But whom say ye that I am ? " Peter, 
answering, said, " The Christ of God." 

See above, pp. 86, 131. If the expression, " the 
Son of the living God," recorded by Matthew as having 
been used by our Lord on this occasion, had had a 
meaning, additional to that of " the Christ," so peculiar 
and important as is commonly supposed, one is quite 
at a loss for a reason for its omission by Luke. Sup- 
posing the expressions to be substantially equivalent, 
that question does not arise. 

IX. 26, 27. 

Whosoever shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, of him 
shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he shall come in 
his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels. 
But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, 
which shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of 
God. 

See above, p. 88. 



XL 51.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 153 

IX. 30, 31. 

And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses 
and Elias ; who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease, 
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. 



See above, p. 91 



IX. 35. 



There came a voice out of the cloud, saying, " This is my be- 
loved Son : hear him." 



See above, p. 50. 



IX. 54. 



They said, " Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come 
down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did ? " 

See 2 Kings i. 10, 12. 



X. 12. 

It shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that 
city. 

See above, p. 75. 

XI. 29-32. 

He began to say, " This is an evil generation : they seek a sign ; 
and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas. 
For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also 

the Son of Man be to this generation The men 

of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with this gen- 
eration, and shall condemn it : for they repented at the 
preaching of Jonas : and, behold, a greater than Jonas is 
here." 



See above, pp. 79, 80. 

XI. 51. 

From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which 
perished between the altar and the temple. 

See above, p. 110. 



154 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVI. 16. 

XVI. 16. 

The Law and the Prophets were until John : since that time the 
kingdom of God is preached. 

See above, p. 73. 

XVII. 26 - 29, 32. 

As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of 
the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married 
wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe 
entered into the ark ; and the flood came and destroyed them 
all Remember Lot's wife. 



See above, p. 113. 



XVIII. 31-33. 



He took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, " Behold, we 
go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the 
prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished ; 
for he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be 
mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on ; and they 
shall scourge him, and put him to death, and the third day he 
shall rise again." 

Careless readers of this text have understood our 
Lord as declaring that somewhere in the prophetical 
writings of the Old Testament were contained pre- 
dictions of the various events here specified. If he 
did so declare, we can find those predictions. Where 
are they % Where can it be pretended that any Old 
Testament writer has foretold the following things, or 
any one of them, concerning the Messiah, or the Son 
of Man : that he should be delivered to the Gentiles ; 
that he should be mocked, spit upon, and scourged ; 
and that, after dying, he should have a resurrection on 
the third day 1 We search in vain for declarations of 
this tenor. 

Matthew (xx. 17-19) and Mark (x. 32-34), as 
well as Luke, have, with great particularity, related 



XVIIL 31-33.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 155 

this important conversation. Both of them, like him, 
give in detail the declaration of Jesus respecting his 
approaching sufferings, death, and resurrection. But 
neither of them has any intimation to the effect of 
these events being among " things written by the 
prophets." Can this fact be reconciled with the sup- 
position that those Evangelists considered the events 
specified to have taken place in fulfilment of super- 
natural prediction % Had they entertained that opin- 
ion on a matter so exceedingly singular and important, 
is it possible to suppose that they would have omitted 
all reference to it \ Especially, is it possible to enter- 
tain this supposition concerning Matthew, the only 
one of the three, as far as we know, or have reason to 
suppose, who himself heard this discourse of Jesus ] 
This consideration acquires still greater force when we 
remember that on another occasion when Jesus ex- 
pressed himself to the same effect, though less fully, 
in terms recorded by the same three Evangelists (Matt, 
xvii. 22, 23 ; Mark ix. 30-32; Luke ix. 43-45), no 
one of them gives any hint of ancient prediction being 
accomplished. 

When Jesus had thus declared what should befall 
him, his disciples, says the Evangelist in the next sen- 
tence (xviii. 34), " understood none of these things ; 
and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they 
the things which were spoken." How was this, if 
those sufferings of Jesus, to be followed by his death 
and resurrection, of which he had just been speaking, 
were foretold of the Messiah in the prophetical books 1 
The disciples knew Jesus to be the Messiah, and if in 
their ancient Scriptures it was predicted that the Mes- 
siah would be delivered to Gentiles, mocked, spitted 
on, scourged, put to death, and restored to life, how 
could they fail to understand, how could the saying 



156 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVIII. 31-33. 

have been " hid from them," how could they not know 
" the things which were spoken," when their Master 
declared that thus it was to be with him 1 The cause 
of their perplexity was of just the opposite kind. It 
was because such things were not written by their 
prophets respecting the Messiah, that they were aston- 
ished and bewildered that Jesus, whom they believed 
to be the Messiah, should announce that such was to 
be his lot. Had it been " written by the prophets 
concerning the Son of Man " that he would be sub- 
jected to such indignities, what Jesus said of himself 
would have been plain enough. It was simply be- 
cause his disciples were unable to reconcile it with 
the idea which the prophets presented of the Messiah, 
as a magnificent prince, triumphant over Gentile foes, 
that " this saying was hid from them, neither knew 
they the things which were spoken." 

The construction, in the original, of the clause ren- 
dered in our version, " all things that are written by 
[or in] the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall 
be accomplished," is peculiar and anomalous. The 
peculiarity consists in the syntax of the dative of the 
person (to> vl<*>), and it is equally observable, whether 
we understand the sentence as has been done by our 
translators, or render it, " all things that are written 
by [or in] the prophets shall be accomplished in the 
Son of Man." 

The word out of which the misapprehension of the 
sentence arises, is that rendered " shall be accom- 
plished" (T€k€<r0rj<T€Tcu). The noun from which it is 
derived (tcW) signifies simply an end, and the verb 
(Te\e&>), I bring to an end. Founding themselves on 
an assurance given by their great lawgiver, the writers 
called Prophets had spoken largely of a future dispen- 
sation, which acquired the name of the kingdom of 



XVIII. 31-33.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 157 

God. It is true that they greatly misunderstood its 
nature, but still that kingdom of God, which they had 
intended to foreshadow, was established when Jesus of 
Nazareth, the Son of Man, introduced his religion 
among men. In that just and important sense, when 
Christianity was published, all things written by the 
prophets concerning the Son of Man were accom- 
plished (or wrought out to their end) ; or, all things 
written by the prophets were accomplished (or wrought 
out to their end) in the Son of Man. 

But how 1 By entirely unexpected methods. And 
Jesus, as the circumstances demanded, presents the 
truth in the form of what to his hearers was a para- 
dox. So far from coming into possession of his king- 
dom through splendid conquest, he was to arrive at it 
through an experience of suffering, and (as the world 
estimates such things) defeat and shame. The proph- 
ets had written of a future establishment of the domin- 
ion of the Son of Man. In a better sense than they un- 
derstood, his dominion was to be established. "What 
they had written concerning him was to be brought to 
pass. But it was to be brought to pass in a way of 
which they had not dreamed. The Messiah's kingdom 
was to be founded when he should have risen again 
after being treated with insult and cruelty, and put 
to death. 

With these remarks, I present the following para- 
phrase as bringing out the true sense of the passage : — 

" He took to himself the twelve Apostles, and said 
to them, Behold, we are now going up to Jerusalem, 
and there that kingdom of the Son of Man, spoken of 
by the ancient writers, is to be set up. It will be 
through an instrumentality expected neither by them 
nor by you. For the Son of Man will first be betrayed 
to Gentiles, who will treat him with indignity and 
14 



158 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIX. 35. 

violence, and at length put him to death. But, not- 
withstanding all this, victorious over such reverses, 
three days only will pass before he will rise again, to 
establish himself in that office of which the great 
lawgiver wrote (Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18, xxii. 18, xxvi. 
4, xxviii. 14 ; Deut. xviii. 15), and to which the line 
of later sages constantly looked forward, though they 
so imperfectly understood its nature." 

XIX. 35. 

They cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus 
thereon. 

See above, p. 99, and observe that neither Mark nor 
Luke refers, like Matthew, to the passage in Zech- 
ariah. 

XIX. 38. 

Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord ; 
peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. 

See above, pp. 101, 102. 

XIX. 46. 

It is written, " My house is the house of prayer" ; but ye have 
made it a den of thieves. 

See above, p. 102. 

XX. 17. 

What is this then that is written : " The stone which the build- 
ers rejected, the same is become the head of the corner" ? 

See above, p. 103. 

XX. 38. 

He is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live 
unto him. 

To the account of the reasoning of Jesus on this 



XXI. 22.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 159 

occasion, as given by Matthew and Mark, Luke adds 
the clause, " for all live unto him." I would rather 
render the words, for all helonging to him live. So 
understood, they sustain the view which above (pp. 
104- 106) I have presented of the passage as it stands 
in the other Evangelists. "All belonging to him live.'* 
That is, those whom he recognizes as his own, in the 
sense of being objects of his favor, he will not suffer 
to die. In the text of the Law referred to, he recog- 
nized Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as his own, in the 
sense of being objects of his favor. It may be inferred, 
then, that he would not permit them to perish. 

XX. 42, 43. 

David himself saith, in the book of Psalms, " The Lord said 
unto my Lord, ' Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine 
enemies thy footstool.' " 

See above, pp. 107- 109. 

XXL 22. 

These be the days of vengeance, that all things which are writ- 
ten may be fulfilled. 

" Written" where % In the book of God's decrees ; 
in the counsels of Divine Providence. (See above, pp. 
117, 118, and comp. Ps. cxxxix. 16.) Or we may 
understand our Lord as referring to the threats uttered 
by Moses (Lev. xxvi. 14-39; Deut. xxviii. 15-68) 
of punishments to be incurred by the people, should 
they be rebellious and perverse, and declaring that a 
retribution, of even such severity as that, was what 
the people of his age had incurred, and were about to 
experience. 



160 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXI. 27. 

XXI. 27. 

Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, with 
power and great glory. 

See above, pp. 112, 113. 

XXII. 30. 

That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom ; and ye 
shall sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 

See above, pp. 98, 99. 

XXII. 37. 

I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accom- 
plished in me, " And he was reckoned among the trans- 
gressors." 

The quotation is from the pseudo-Isaiah (liii. 12). 
Of whomsoever the words might have been originally 
spoken, nothing could be more natural, or more con- 
formable to the established uses of language, than for 
our Lord to say that they were accomplished in him, 
when he was in circumstances which they correctly 
described. In point of fact, I think that by the origi- 
nal writer they were used in reference to the Messiah, 
though in a different sense from that in which the 
application is made of them by Jesus. See " Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 252-259. 

XXII. 69. 

Hereafter shall the Son of Man sit on the right hand of the 
power of God. 

See above, pp. 121, 122. 

XXIII. 46. 

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, "Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit." 

He expressed his emotion in language of the Psalm- 
ist (xxxi. 5 ; comp. Wisdom iii. 1). 



XXIV. 25-27.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 161 

XXIV. 25-27. 

He said unto them, " O fools, and slow of heart to believe all 
that the prophets have spoken ! Ought not Christ to have suf- 
fered these things, and to enter into his glory? " And begin- 
ning at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded unto them 
in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. 

In reading this text, I have often doubted whether 
we have the correct version of the first clause. The 
phraseology rendered by our translation " believe all " 
(iricTTeveiv eiri iraaiv), is a peculiar construction. The 
use of the preposition (eV/) after this verb (irio-Teveiv), 
and preceding a dative of the subject, occurs, I believe, 
in only three (or, in effect, two) other places in the 
New Testament (1 Tim. i. 16 ; Rom. ix. 33 ; comp. 
1 Pet. ii. 6) ; and there in constructions much less 
harsh. It might, perhaps, admit a question, whether 
we ought not to render, " O fools, and slow of 
heart to believe (that is, in me), after all that the 
prophets have said ! " or, " O fools, and slow of heart, 
to believe (in me), upon (that is, founding your slow- 
ness to believe, your prejudices and objections, upon) 
the representations of the prophets ! " 

But, passing by this, " all that the prophets have 
spoken" is the representation of the prophets taken 
together, taken as a whole. The representation of 
the prophets (that is, of the teachers of old time) had 
included the idea that the Messiah should be a great 
deliverer ; and accepting that representation of the 
Messiah, and believing for a time that he had at length 
come in the person of " Jesus of Nazareth, which was 
a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all 
the people" (xxiv. 19), the disciples had "trusted 
that it had been he which should have redeemed 
Israel." But events had come to pass which shook 
their faith. Contrary to what they expected, differ- 
14* 



162 NOTES" ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXIV. 25-27. 

ently from any thing they had been prepared for by 
the ancient sages who had written of the Messiah, 
Jesus had been betrayed, condemned, and crucified. 
They were amazed, perplexed, and desponding ; and 
Jesus rebukes them for being dull of understanding 
(under the pressure of this disappointment and dis- 
trust) to believe that he could be the person whom the 
disclosures in the Old Testament had in view. 

" Ought not " — was it unfit that the Christ should 
" enter into his glory " through a course of suffering, 
as Jesus had done I The disciples thought it was 
utterly unfit ; they found no such representation in 
their prophets, from whom their ideas had been drawn ; 
and because they had seen their Master a sufferer, they 
could not any longer see how he could be the Messiah. 
Jesus showed them that, on the contrary, it was fit. 
He did not show that it was fit in the sense of being 
a suitable fulfilment of ancient predictions declaring 
that the Messiah was to be a sufferer. This was not 
to be shown, for there were no such predictions. But 
he showed them that it was fit in itself, — fit as part 
of the plan of God's providence and grace, — and that, 
taking " all that the prophets had spoken" together, 
looking at their representation in its various stages, 
tracing their conception to its source, and making 
allowance for the causes of the erroneous views which 
they had associated with it, there was no reason why 
the fact of Jesus having been a sufferer should forbid 
his being acknowledged as God's anointed. 

And how did Jesus show this % Precisely in the 
way which would have been necessary, on the sup- 
position that my theory of the subject is true. " Be- 
ginning at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded 
unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
himself." From Moses' Law he showed how, in God's 



XXIV. 25-27.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 163 

original disclosure, through Moses, of the future com- 
ing of a " prophet like unto himself" (Deut. xviii. 15), 
the idea of a Messiah had its germ and standard. 
Then, from the series of later writers, he showed how 
that idea had been corrupted, and ideas of merely 
worldly pomp and conquest had been connected with 
it, until it had become irreconcilable in the minds of 
readers with the idea of one who should suffer and 
die. (See " Lectures," &c., Vol. II. p. 381 et seq. ; 
Vol. IV. p. 304 et seq.) 

By the authority which the disciples (in common 
with great part of their nation at this period) errone- 
ously attributed to the writers called by them the 
Later Prophets, the disciples were misled into such a 
conception of the Messiah as made them ready to give 
up their Master's pretensions to that character when 
they saw him suffer and die. Under this influence, 
they became slow of understanding to believe that 
Jesus could set up a kingdom. The account given 
by Luke of his Master's correction of their error, is 
extremely brief. But it accords entirely with what 
my views of the Old Testament lead me to believe to 
have been the truth of the case. They thought it was 
utterly unfit that the expected benefactor, on his way 
to his greatness, should be a sufferer. " He expounded 
unto them in all the things concerning himself." He 
showed how much, in ancient descriptions of the Mes- 
siah, was well founded, and how much was erroneous. 
" Beginning at Moses," he developed the idea of the 
Messiah as having been originally, according to God's 
own oracle, that of a " prophet," a teacher, the head 
of a moral empire ; an office with which the idea of a 
previous discipline of suffering was by no means in- 
consistent, but the contrary. And then, glancing at 
the later writers, he showed how that primitive con- 



164 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXIV. 44-47. 

ception had from age to age been corrupted in their 
hands, in a way to create those very prepossessions, 
unfavorable to an acknowledgment of the claims of 
Jesus, by which these simple disciples were now em- 
barrassed. 

XXIV. 44-47. 

And he said unto them, " These are the words which I spake 
unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be 
fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the 
Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me." Then opened 
he their understanding, that they might understand the Scrip- 
tures, and said unto them, " Thus it is written, and thus it 
behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third 
day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be 
preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Je- 
rusalem." 

The sense of the first clause in the declaration of 
Jesus here recorded, is perhaps better brought out, in 
translating, by a little different collocation of the words, 
equally accordant with the original : " All things which 
were written in the Law, &c. must be fulfilled con- 
cerning me" ; — that is, concerning me and no one 
else; I, and I alone, am the Messiah to whom they 
pointed. 

Moses, by supernatural instruction, and therefore, of 
course, with exact correctness, had spoken of a " proph- 
et like unto himself." Jesus was that prophet, and so 
the words of Moses were fulfilled in him. The writers 
who came after Moses, the Prophets and Psalmists, 
without supernatural instruction, and therefore with 
liability to human error, had had the same personage 
in view in what they had written, however they had 
deviated from a correct description of him. Whatever, 
therefore, they had written concerning the Messiah, 
was to have its completion in Jesus, and in no other 



XXIV. 44-47.] GOSPEL OF LUKE. 165 

person. To him, authorized or mistaken, exact or in- 
exact, it all related. Its subject and aim was his as- 
sumption of a divinely bestowed office. Its mistakes 
were mistakes respecting the nature of that office. 
" These are the words," he says, " which I spake unto 
you while I was yet with you." This is what he had 
in effect told them, when he declared himself to be 
the Christ. 

This was difficult for them to believe, for in the Scrip- 
tures which they reverenced there were parts which 
they could not at all reconcile with the idea of a suf- 
fering Messiah. " Then opened he their understanding, 
that they might understand the Scriptures," discerning 
the different degrees of authority belonging to those 
writings, their relations to each other, and so the just 
inferences to be deduced from the whole. " And said 
unto them, < Thus it is written, and thus it behooved 
Christ to suffer,' " &c. " It behoved " ($>e*), it was fit ; 
the same word which is used in the question (xxiv. 26) 
" Ought not Christ to have suffered these things % " &c. 
The asserted fitness by no means arose out of what 
had been " written in the Prophets and in the Psalms," 
but out of the nature of things, and of the office of a 
moral reformer which Jesus was to fulfil. (Comp. Luke 
ix. 22.) The sufferings of Christ were fit, notwith- 
standing what was there written. " Thus," on the 
one hand, says Jesus, " it is written," by the Prophets 
and Psalmists, " yet thus," on the other hand, it was 
and is fit, for the fulfilment of God's high purposes, 
that the Christ should suffer and die (xxiv. 46). When 
allowance was made for the errors of the Prophets and 
Psalmists, and when, from those errors, their concep- 
tion was traced back to its primitive source, it would 
appear that, notwithstanding their representations, 
there was no unfitness in the Messiah's sufferings. 



166 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 21. 

" That repentance and remission of sins should be 
preached in his name among all nations," was a view 
of the main purpose of his commission as foreign from 
the popular conception of it, as that he should be a 
sufferer. 



SECTION IV. 

GOSPEL OE JOHN. 



I. 21. 

They asked him, " What then ? Art thou Elias ? " And he 
saith, " I am not." " Art thou that prophet ? " And he an- 
swered, " No." 



See above, pp. 85, 86. 



I. 23. 



He said, " I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
1 Make straight the way of the Lord,' as said the prophet 
Esaias." 

See above, pp. 48-50, 144. What is further to be 
remarked here, however, is, that John the Baptist says 
that he is " the voice," &c. ; and that, instead of the 
word corresponding to " prepare," which is used by 
the Septuagint translators and by the other Evange- 
lists, John has " make straight." It is plain that the 
Baptist, or the Evangelist who records his saying, 
was not studious of exactness in the quotation. 

I. 34. 

I saw and bare record, that this is the Son of God. 

See above, pp. 50-53. 



I. 51.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 167 

I. 36-49. 

Looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, " Behold the Lamb 

of God ! " Nathanael answered and saith unto him, 

" Rabbi, thou art the Son of God ; thou art the King of Is- 
rael." 

This passage illustrates the meaning of the phrase 
Son of God, showing it to be, as I have argued, equiva- 
lent to Messiah. John declares Jesus to be the Lamb 
of God (i. 36). One of his two disciples, who hear 
him, says to his brother, " We have found the Messias, 
which is, being interpreted, the Christ" (41). — Again, 
Philip says to Nathanael, " "We have found him of 
whom Moses in the Law, and the prophets did write " 
(45) ; and Nathanael, being convinced, in an interview 
with Jesus, of the correctness of Philip's opinion, ex- 
presses his conviction in the avowal, " Rabbi, thou art 
the Son of God ; thou art the King of Israel " (49). 

" Rabbi," means Doctor, or Teacher. " Son of God," 
in my opinion, is equivalent to Messiah ; and this being 
so, there is no hardness in the collocation. But others 
think that it means God the Son, one of the persons 
of the Divine Trinity, the infinite Majesty of heaven 
and earth. How will the sentence read on that sup- 
position \ " Teacher, thou art ." I cannot ven- 
ture to make the substitution. 

I. 51. 

Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God as- 
cending and descending upon the Son of Man. 

See above, pp. 65 - 68. I think there is here an al- 
lusion to the passage in Genesis (xxviii. 12), where it 
is related that Jacob saw " the angels of God ascend- 
ing and descending," in his dream at Bethel ; and our 
Lord's sense, conveyed in this figurative language, is, 
You shall see that I have direct intercourse with 
heaven. (Comp. Ps. xxxiv. 7, xci. 11, 12.) 



168 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 17. 

II. 17. 

His disciples remembered that it was written, " The zeal of 
thy house eateth me up." 

It is so written by one of the writers of the Psalms 
(lxix. 9). But that writer is clearly speaking of him- 
self, without any reference to Jesus, or to any other 
person. And he uses the words respecting himself in 
an application entirely different from that which the 
disciples make of them to their Master. The words 
employed by the Psalmist in reference to himself in 
one sense, are susceptible of being referred to Jesus in 
another sense. And in this latter the disciples adopt 
them. " His disciples remembered that it was written" ; 
or, as we might phrase it, They were forcibly reminded 
of that expression. (Comp. xii. 16.) 

II. 18-22. 

Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, " What sign show- 
est thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things ? " Jesus 
answered and said unto them, " Destroy this temple, and in 

three days I will raise it up." But he spake of the 

temple of his body. When, therefore, he was risen from the 
dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this ; and 
they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had 
said. 

See above, p. 79. In order to rise from the dead, Jesus 
must first die. But before his death and resurrection 
actually took place, his disciples had found it impossi- 
ble to reconcile their conception of the Messiah, as 
they had derived it from the Scriptures, with that of 
his being removed by a violent death (Matthew xvi. 22 ; 
Mark ix. 32 ; Luke ix. 45, xviii. 34). They could not, 
at the same time, " believe the Scripture, and the word 
which Jesus had said." But "when he was risen 
from the dead," their minds were more enlightened. 
"They believed the word which Jesus had said," 



III. 14,15.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 169 

because now the fact had illustriously confirmed it. 
And, with the new light which had broken on their 
minds respecting his character and office, now also 
"they believed the Scripture." They looked at the 
Scripture through a different medium from what they 
had heretofore done. They applied to it truer methods 
of interpretation. Those representations of the Mes- 
siah which had forbidden them to conceive of him as a 
sufferer, they now saw to be representations made by 
uninspired men. The radical Scriptural idea of the 
Messiah they traced to Moses's conception of him as 
" a prophet," a teacher, and holding to this, and using 
it as the key to what was said by the later writers, 
of inferior authority, they were able at once to " be- 
lieve the Scripture, ^,nd the word which Jesus had 
said." See above, pp. 161 - 166. 

III. 14, 15. 

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must 
the Son of Man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth in 
him should not perish, but have eternal life. 

Clearly a figurative illustration, drawn from the ac- 
count in the Book of Numbers (xxi. 6-9) of the cure 
effected through the instrumentality of the " fiery 
serpent " made by Moses. As by the lifting up of the 
serpent men's bodies were cured, so men's souls will 
be by the lifting up of the Son of Man. As in the 
former case men did not perish, but had life, so in the 
latter case they will have better, even " eternal life." 
Of the same description is the comparison of the res- 
urrection of Jesus (Matthew xii. 40) to the reappear- 
ance of Jonah, as related in the book which bears his 
name. 

15 



170 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 5. 

IV. 5. 

Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, 
near to the parcel of ground which Jacob gave to his son 
Joseph. 

See Josh. xx. 7, xxiv. 32 ; Judg. ix. 7 ; also, Gen- 
esis xlix. 22 - 26 ; and comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. II. 
pp. 113, 114, 119, 120. 

IV. 20. 
Our fathers worshipped in this mountain. 

See "Lectures," &c, Vol. I. p. 492, note. 

IV. 25. 

The woman saith unto him, " I know that Messias cometh 
(which is called Christ) ; when he*is come, he will tell us all 
things." 

From this text (with which comp. iv. 29, 39 - 42) it 
would appear that the Samaritans, who did not pos- 
sess the writings of the Prophets, but only the Law 
(see "Lectures," &c, Vol. I. p. 73, Vol. II. p. 138), 
retained better than the Jews the primitive idea of the 
Messiah as a teacher (Deut. xviii. 15). 

V. 39, 40. 

Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal 
life ; and they are they which testify of me ; and ye will 
not come to me, that ye might have life. 

There existed in our Saviour's time, among the Jews, 
an expectation of an " eternal life " after death. (See 
Matt. xxii. 23 et seq. ; Luke xiv. 14 ; John xi. 24 ; Acts 
xxiii. 8.) Whencesoever derived, and however shaped 
by communications with their Babylonian, Persian, 
and Greek masters, it was not a doctrine taught in 
their ancient Scriptures. They, however, with whom 
Jesus was now conversing, erroneously supposed that 



VI. 30,31.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 171 

it was so taught. I understand him as saying to them, 
You imagine that in your Scriptures you have dis- 
closures of a life to come, and therefore you do not 
need me to make it known. But examine them, and 
see whether it is so. They no further reveal that doc- 
trine, than as they speak of me, who am appointed to 
bring it to light ; of me, to whom you are unwilling 
to listen. — Why should he have bid them search the 
Scriptures for that doctrine, if the opinion already 
confidently entertained by them, that it was taught in 
those writings, was well founded 1 

V. 46, 47. 

Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me ; for he wrote 
of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye be- 
lieve my words ? 

If ye are not moved by his writings, whom ye pro- 
fess so to reverence, how can it be expected that ye 
will be by my words, whom you professedly contemn ] 
— " He wrote of me " ; the particular reference, I 
suppose, is constantly to the promise by Moses of a 
"prophet like unto himself" (Deut. xviii. 15). 

VI. 14, 15. 

Those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, 
said, " This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into 
the world." When Jesus, therefore, perceived that they 
would come and take him by force, to make him a king, &c. 

The text bears witness to the popular confusion of 
ideas between the " prophet " predicted by Moses, and 
a secular " king." 

VI. 30, 31. 

They said therefore unto him, " What sign showest thou, then, 
that we may see and believe thee ? What dost thou work ? 
Our fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written, 
4 He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' " 



172 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VI. 45. 

The quotation is from a Psalm (lxxviii. 24). When 
the Jews asked, as they often did, for " a sign," and 
" a sign from heaven," as the proper authentication of 
the mission of Jesus (see above, pp. 79, 85, 131), 
they seem to have had in view such Old Testament 
relations as those of the sending of manna, and of 
the descent of flame upon Mount Sinai (Exod. xix. 18 ; 
comp. John vi. 49, 58), upon the sacrifice of Elijah 
(1 Kings xviii. 38), and upon the soldiers sent to appre- 
hend him (2 Kings i. 10, 12), according to their in- 
terpretation of those narratives. — The miracle which 
Jesus had just performed in feeding the multitudes 
(John vi. 11), bore a resemblance to the provision of 
manna, but not in the particular, supposed to have be- 
longed to that phenomenon, of a shower from the sky. 
The Jews seem to invite Jesus, if he intends an imi- 
tation of the act of Moses, to make it complete. 

VI. 45. 

It is written in the Prophets, " And they shall be all taught of 
God." 

By the pseudo-Isaiah, describing that glory and fe- 
licity which he anticipated for his countrymen returned 
from their exile, it was said (liv. 13 ; comp. " Lectures," 
&c, Yol. III. pp. 259, 260), " And all thy children 
shall be taught of the Lord." This language, says 
Jesus, may well be applied to the present state of 
things. God is now teaching you by me ; and, as he 
continues in the same verse, " Every man that hath 
heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto 



VII. 37, 38. 

Jesus stood and cried, saying, " If any man thirst, let him come 
unto me, and drink ; he that believeth on me, as the Scrip- 
ture hath said, ' Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living 
water.' " 



VIII. 17.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 173 

In " the Scripture " we find such language as this : 
" With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of 
salvation " (Is. xii. 3) ; "I will pour water upon him 
that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground " (Is. 
xliv. 3) ; " Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and 
like a spring of water, whose waters fail not" (Is. 
lviii. 11). These texts bear a very faint resemblance 
to those expressions of our Lord which he compared 
with what " the Scripture hath said." Yet none, I 
believe, have been or can be pointed out as more likely 
to have been had in view by him. Such an instance 
shows plainly that the expression, " as the Scripture 
hath said," and such like, will not bear to be strictly 
interpreted, and that it is out of the question to con- 
sider them as indicating a reference to a supernatural 
prediction fulfilled. 

VII. 40-42,52. 

Many of the people, therefore, when they heard this saying, 
said, " Of a truth this is the Prophet." Others said, "This 
is the Christ." But some said, " Shall Christ come out of 
Galilee ? Hath not the Scripture said, that Christ Com- 
eth of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, 
where David was ? " 

" Search and look : for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." 

See above, pp. 35, 171. These prejudiced persons 
perhaps made rather too broad a generalization, when 
they said that from Galilee had arisen " no prophet." 
Of the ancient prophets, it is likely that Nahum, at 
least, was a native of that province. (Comp. " Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. III. p. 285.) 

VIII. 17. 

It is also written in your law, " The testimony of two men 
is true." 

15* 



174 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VIII. 56. 

" At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth 
of three witnesses, shall the matter be established." 
(Deut. xix. 15.) 

VIII. 56. 

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day ; and he saw it, 
and was glad. 

The vision of the Messiah's day, which, indistinct as 
it was, reasonably caused Abraham to rejoice, was that 
related to have been disclosed on Mount Moriah (Gen. 
xxii. 18; comp. xii. 3). 

X. 22. 

And it was at Jerusalem the Feast of the Dedication, and it was 
winter. 

See " Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. p. 144. 

X. 34, 35. 

Jesus answered them, " Is it not written in your Law, ' I said, 
Ye are gods ' ? and the Scripture cannot be broken." 

The words quoted by our Lord as the basis of his 
argument occur in a Psalm (Ixxxii. 6). — " The Scrip- 
ture cannot be broken " ; that is, " There is no blot- 
ting those words out of Scripture." 

XL 27. 

I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should 
come into the world. 

I would translate, " he who is to come into the 
world," each of the three clauses containing, in my 
view, one of the equivalent titles of the Messiah. See 
above, pp. 50-53, 70,171. 

XI. 49-52. 

And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high-priest that 



XL 49-52.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 175 

same year, said unto them, " Ye know nothing at all, nor 
consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die 
for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." And 
this spake he not of himself: but being high-priest that year, 
he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation ; and not 
for that nation only, but that also he should gather together 
in one the children of God that were scattered abroad. 

Caiaphas had said nothing (50) of any effect of the 
death of Jesus to " gather together in one the chil- 
dren of God that were scattered abroad." We must 
accordingly translate John's words, with equal literal- 
ness, " Being high-priest that year [or, high-priest as 
he was that year], he spoke prophetically ; for \otC\ 
Jesus was [in fact] to die for that nation [as Caiaphas, 
using those words in a different sense, had said], and 
not for that nation only [was he to die], but also 
[which Caiaphas had not said] that he might gather 
together in one the children of God that were scattered 
abroad " [that is, among the Gentile nations]. 

But in what sense is it meant that Caiaphas, " high- 
priest as he was that year, spoke prophetically " % It 
is difficult to imagine that John intended to affirm 
Caiaphas to have been endowed by God with the su- 
pernatural power of predicting the future, and that 
too respecting an office of Jesus which even the dis- 
ciples of Jesus did not yet understand. Nor was it 
any part of the high-priest's function under the Law 
to foretell coming events. (See " Lectures," &c., Vol. I. 
pp. 211, 212.) It is simply the same vivid language 
— but language never misunderstood, in common dis- 
course — which we use, when, remarking on some 
striking coincidence (whether actual, or merely fanci- 
ful or verbal) between something which has occurred 
and something which had previously been said, we 
say, " The man did not speak of himself ; uncon- 
sciously to himself, he foretold the future " ; — " He 



176 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XL 49-52. 

uttered prophetic words, so that one might imagine 
him inspired " ; — " The event marked his utterance 
for providential, so exactly was it fulfilled." (Comp. 
Tit. i. 12, 13.) 

This is one of the cases in which examples are more 
satisfactory than analysis and discussion. Shakespeare 
says : — 

" Every flower 
Did, as a prophet, weep what it foresaw, 
In Hector's wrath." 

And again : — 

"Jesters often prove prophets." 

Dryden says : — 

" He loved so fast, 
As if he feared each day would be her last ; 
Too true a prophet to foresee the fate, 
That should so soon divide their happy state." 

Is it objected that these examples are from poets % 
A speech is under my eye, in which the following lan- 
guage is used : " When I found the Senate of the 
United States throwing themselves into the breach,, 
that body, which Martin Van Buren, in 1828, in 
a spirit of prophecy, foretold to be the only obsta- 
cle to Executive encroachments," &c. A newspaper 
paragraph, which just now falls in my way, speak- 
ing of the Rev. Dr. Stillman's sermon for the Boston 
Female Asylum, says, that when he agreed to perform 
that service, " he declared that he doubted not that an 
institution founded on the benevolent affections, would, 
like the snow-ball, accumulate in its progress, and be- 
come of extensive utility." And the writer adds : 
" This ivas prophecy, — and it has been fulfilled." These 
persons did not mean to declare that Dr. Stillman and 
President Van Buren had literally supernatural pre- 
science. Nor did John mean to pronounce the same 



XII. 14-16.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 177 

thing of the high-priest Caiaphas. It would be use- 
less to multiply illustrations of this sort. Everybody 
uses such expressions freely, and no one using them 
doubts of being understood. See above, pp. 29, 73. 

XII. 13. 

Hosanna ! Blessed is the King of Israel, that cometh in the 
name of the Lord ! 

See above, pp. 101, 102, 

XII. 14-16. 

Jesus, when he had found a young ass, sat thereon ; as it is writ- 
ten, " Fear not, daughter of Sion ; behold, thy King cometh, 
sitting on an ass's colt." These things understood not his 
disciples at the first ; but when Jesus was glorified, then re- 
membered they that these things were written of him, and 
that they had done these things unto him." 

See above, pp. 99-101. John's quotation from 
Zechariah is very inexact, even more so than that of 
Matthew ; and this in a case where, if the Evangelists 
had designed to point out a fulfilment of supernatural 
prediction, a precise citation of the words was all-im- 
portant. — " These things understood not his disciples" ; 
this literal accordance of a transaction in the last days 
of Jesus with certain language used in another sense 
by an ancient writer, in a poetical representation of the 
Messiah, was not contemplated, perceived, or attended 
to by the disciples of Jesus at the time ; but after- 
wards, " when Jesus was glorified," the coincidence 
was remarked, as having a sort of curiosity and inter- 
est ; and it was the more striking, as the disciples, 
when they made the arrangement, had nothing of the 
kind in view. " Then remembered they that these 
things were written of him [that is, of the Messiah], 
and that they had done these things unto him [that is, 



178 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XII. 34. 

to Jesus, who was the Messiah]." And Matthew and 
John, in their histories, call the attention of their read- 
ers to that coincidence. (Comp. ii. 17.) But Mark (xi. 7) 
and Luke (xix. 35), though they relate the occurrence 
at length, have not thought it worth while to notice any 
resemblance borne by it to language of Zechariah, as 
it would seem that they could scarcely have failed to 
do, had they regarded it in the singularly important 
light of the accomplishment of a prediction made six 
or seven centuries before. 

XII. 34. 

The people answered him, " We have heard out of the Law, 
that Christ abideth for ever ; and how sayest thou, ' The Son 
of Man must be lifted up ' ? " 

" The Law " is used for the Scripture, in the same 
loose sense as in a text just remarked upon (x. 34). 
Not Moses, but ancient writers who had succeeded 
him, had used language which it was not unnatural 
to interpret as indicating their belief that the Messiah 
would be immortal (Ps. Ixxxix. 36, 37, ex. 4 ; Is. ix. 
7). And such in fact has been the construction put 
upon that language by more recent Jewish writers. 
(See Bertholdt, « Christol. Jud." § 28.) 

This text is a clear confirmation of the argument 
maintained above (see pp. 65 - 68), that the titles 
Christ and Son of Man were subject to be used as 
equivalent and convertible. 

XII. 37, 38. 

Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they 
believed not on him ; that the saying of Esaias the prophet 
might be fulfilled, which he spake, " Lord, who hath believed 
our report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been re- 
vealed ? " 

The words quoted are from the pseudo-Isaiah (liii. 



XII. 39-41.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 179 

1). It is perfectly plain that in them the writer is not 
predicting the incredulity with which the declarations 
of the Messiah would be listened to, but is complain- 
ing of the incredulity which would attend what he 
himself says concerning the person described in the 
following passage. By orthodox commentators that 
person is understood to be the Messiah, supernaturally 
foreknown by Isaiah. I also think that the writer is 
speaking of the Messiah, though without any super- 
natural foreknowledge. (" Lectures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 
256-259.) But whoever understands the Messiah 
to be the subject of the passage must needs regard 
the introductory words, quoted by John, as the writer's 
remark on the reluctant reception, by his own contem- 
poraries, of what he was about to say, and not as any 
prediction of the aversion which would attend the 
teaching of any future person. It would seem that 
nothing could be clearer than this. And yet, if it be 
so, there is an end of the question respecting the in- 
ference supposed to be deducible from the emphatic 
form, " that the saying might be fulfilled." If in this 
case all that can possibly be meant by it is, that the 
words quoted well accord with, and describe, the inci- 
dent to which they are applied, then nothing more can 
be inferred, ex vi termini, from its use in any other 
case. 

XII. 39-41. 

Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, 
" He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart ; that 
they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their 
heart, and be converted, and I should heal them." These 
things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him. 

The quotation, which is from the Book of Isaiah 
(vi. 10 ; comp. pp. 80 9 81, 130), is very inexactly 



180 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIII. 18. 

made. The language which introduces it, " because 
that Esaias said," is quite strong ; but from the con- 
text (Is. vi. 5, 8) nothing can possibly be clearer than 
that Isaiah is speaking of his own ministry, and the 
insensibility which it had to encounter on the part of 
his own contemporaries. The words well described 
the dulness of those whom Jesus addressed, and as 
such John applied them. It is as if he had said, 
" They would not believe," — the truth could not reach 
them, — because their senses were obtuse, and their 
hearts hard, just as Isaiah said was the case with the 
men of his own time. The words (" These things said 
Esaias," &c.) subjoined to the quotation, I understand 
to be John's reference to the place in Isaiah's book 
from which the quotation was taken : — I quote these 
words, he means to say, from that part of Isaiah's 
writings where he poetically describes a vision of the 
Divine glory (Is. vi. 1 et seq. ; " Lectures," &c., Vol. 

III. pp. 186 - 188). " When he saw his glory " ; that 
is, the glory of him who in the words quoted is intro- 
duced (John xii. 40) speaking of himself as willing 
to "heal." 

XIII. 18. 

I speak not of you all ; I know whom I have chosen ; but, that 
the Scripture may be fulfilled, " He that eateth bread with 
me hath lifted up his heel against me." 

The Psalmist (xli. 9 ; comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. 

IV. p. 323), speaking of the cruel ingratitude of which 
he was himself the object, had said: "Yea, mine own 
familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of 
my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." Our 
Lord quotes the words in application to the treachery 
of Judas, changing, however, " did eat of my bread" 
to " eateth bread with me." If any one chooses to 



XVII. 12.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 181 

entertain the fancy, that the words of the Psalm were 
prophetical of the conduct of the false disciple, he of 
course supposes the writer to have spoken in the per- 
son of Jesus. Let him consider how he will reconcile 
that hypothesis with another part of the Psalm : " I 
said, ; Lord, be merciful unto me ; heal my soul ; for 
I have sinned against thee ' " (xli. 4). 

XV. 25. 

This cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is 
written in their Law : " They hated me without a cause." 

" That is written in their Laiv " ; see above, p. 178. 
The words quoted occur in two of the Psalms (xxxv. 
19, Ixix. 4 ; comp. cix. 3), where quite plainly the writer 
is expressing his sense of personal injury. They belong 
to that very small number of poems in the Psalter, so 
painful to the feelings of the Christian reader, which 
express the bitterest vindictiveness. To suppose that 
they are words used by inspiration concerning the 
future experiences of Jesus, involves the impossibility 
of attributing to him language the most directly op- 
posed to the humane and forgiving spirit of his relig- 
ion. The fulfilment, in this case, of " the word written 
in their Law," consisted simply in the fact that Jesus 
was hated without a cause, as the writer of the Psalms 
referred to complained that he himself had been. 

XVII. 12. 

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy name ; 
those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is 
lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be 
fulfilled. 

I think that the Old Testament will be searched in 
vain for any Scripture which can with any probability 
be interpreted as referring to the apostasy of Judas. 
16 



182 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVIII. 8, 9. 

I think that the fulfilment of Scripture here brought 
to view refers, not to the loss of the son of perdition, 
but to the keeping of the other disciples of Jesus ; a 
sense which will disclose itself if we throw the last 
clause but one into a parenthesis, thus : " Those that 
Thou gavest me I have kept faithful (so that no one of 
them is lost, except that son of perdition), that the 
Scripture might be fulfilled." The Scripture was to 
be fulfilled through the triumphant establishment of 
the Messiah's kingdom in the world ; and the Mes- 
siah's kingdom was to be established through the 
faithful adherence and service of his chosen followers. 
Thus it was that Jesus had kept his followers faithful 
(with one only exception), " that the Scripture might 
be fulfilled." ' 

XVIII. 8,9. 

Jesus answered, " I have told you that I am he ; if, therefore, 
ye seek me, let these go their way " ; that the saying might 
he fulfilled which he spake, " Of them which Thou gavest me 
have I lost none." 

The quotation here is not from the Old Testament ; 
but being introduced with the same form of words 
which often precedes Old Testament quotations, it 
furnishes an illustration of the import of that phrase- 
ology. When Jesus had used the language here quoted 
(see John xvii. 12), it is as certain from the context as 
any thing can be, that he had not been predicting any 
future incident whatever, but had been referring to 
his past watch over his disciples, and its success evinced 
in their fidelity. Yet the Evangelist, who could not 
but have understood his Master as he has caused his 
Master to be understood by us, now declares that Jesus 
subsequently interceded with the Jewish officers for 
the release of his followers, to the end that those words 



XIX. 24.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 183 

" might be fulfilled." It seems to be placed beyond a 
doubt by this instance alone, that the fulfilment so 
often pointed out in connection with quotations in the 
New Testament means simply the suitableness of an 
accommodation to one event, of language originally 
applied to some other event. Jesus at this time (xviii. 
8) interposed to protect his disciples, agreeably to that 
superintendence of them which in another sense he 
had spoken of at another time (xvii. 12). 

XIX. 7. 

The Jews answered him : " We have a Law, and by our Law 
he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God." 

In this text I find further proof that the title Son of 
God is simply equivalent to Messiah. Nowhere in the 
Law is death made the penalty of professing one's self 
the Son of God in those terms, but it is expressly de- 
nounced against the false assumption of the character 
of the prophet like unto Moses, afterwards called the 
Messiah. (Dent xviii-. 18, 20.) 

XIX. 24. 

That the Scripture might be fulfilled which saith, " They parted 
my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast 
lots." 

The Scripture here quoted is from a Psalm (xxii. 18), 
in which, if there is any meaning in language, the 
writer is setting forth his own wrongs and sorrows, 
and by no means bewailing those of any future sufferer. 
(See " Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. p. 322.) He says in 
effect : So confident are my enemies of my ruin and 
my fall, that even now they are planning for the dis- 
tribution of my effects among themselves. The Evan- 
gelist, when he said that the soldiers made a partition 
of the garments of Jesus, " that the Scripture might 



184 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIX. 28. 

be fulfilled," meant simply that the incident might be 
described in the same language as had been used by 
an ancient sufferer. So plain is this, that it seems 
quite superfluous to add, that John is the only one of 
the Evangelists who has pointed out the correspond- 
ence, though all four (comp. Matt, xxvii. 35 ; Mark 
xv. 24 ; Luke xxiii. 34) have related the occurrence ; 
a fact scarcely to be reconciled with the supposition of 
a supernatural prediction fulfilled by it. 

XIX. 28. 

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, 
that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, " I thirst." 

Under a wrong impression, as I conceive, of the 
true construction of this sentence, commentators have 
searched for the words " I thirst " in Jewish Scrip- 
ture, and have found, not those words, but the words 
" in my thirst " (Ps. lxix. 21). I understand the mean- 
ing of the Evangelist to be that which to a careful 
reader is disclosed by the following punctuation, cor- 
responding to what is exhibited in Griesbach's manual 
edition of the original Greek ; viz. " Jesus, knowing 
that all things were now accomplished that the Scrip- 
ture might be fulfilled, saith, " I thirst." That is, 
Jesus, knowing that he had now acquitted himself of his 
whole task in establishing his kingdom, — that every 
thing to the last had now been done by him that was 
to be done for the accomplishment of his work as Mes- 
siah, and accordingly for the fulfilment of Scripture, 
which had spoken of that work, — now permitted his 
mind for the first time to turn to his own sufferings, 
and to breathe out in a single word the agony of his 
mortal fever. He did not say, " I thirst," for the pur- 
pose of fulfilling any Scripture. But, knowing that 
nothing was left to be done of that work by which he 



XIX. 36.] GOSPEL OF JOHN. 185 

was to fulfil Scripture, he was at liberty to spend one 
thought upon himself. 

XIX. 36. 

These things were done, that the Scripture should be fulfilled : 
" A bone of him shall not be broken." 

Nothing can be more express than this language, if 
we insist on interpreting it without regard to idiom 
and usage. The words of the Old Testament, " Nei- 
ther shall ye break a bone thereof," were " fulfilled" by 
the forbearance of the soldiers to break the legs of 
Jesus ; and not only so, but the forbearance of the 
soldiers to break the legs of Jesus was to the very end 
" that the Scripture should be fulfilled." If ever there 
was a case in which the reductio ad absurdum was 
conclusive, it is so in the present instance to show 
that the popular interpretation of the phraseology re- 
lating to a fulfilment of Scripture cannot be sustained. 
The ceremony of the Paschal Feast was designed to 
commemorate the hasty departure of the Israelites 
from Egypt. It was accordingly full of indications 
and symbols of haste. " Thus shall ye eat it ; with 
your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your 
staff in your hand ; and ye shall eat it in haste." (Ex. 
xii. 11.) They were not even to stop to break the 
bones of the lamb, so as to taste the marrow. (Ibid. 
46 ; comp. Numb. ix. 12 ; " Lectures," &c., Vol. I. p. 
138.) And this direction, relating to a subject so en- 
tirely different, is said by the Evangelist to be " ful- 
filled " in the omission of the guard to break the legs 
of Jesus as he hung dead upon the cross. It is palpa- 
ble to sense that his only meaning was, that the words, 
transferred from their original signification, might be 
applied to what he was relating. 
16* 



186 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIX. 37. 

XIX. 37. 

And again another Scripture saith, " They shall look on him 
whom they pierced." 

In the prophecy of Zechariah, God is represented 
as declaring that his unmerited clemency will melt his 
people to repentance and contrition. Self-condemned 
and abased, he says, they will turn back to the Divine 
Benefactor whom they have grieved and wounded by 
their impieties ; " they shall look upon me, whom they 
have pierced." (Zech. xii. 10 ; comp. " Lectures," &c., 
Vol. III. p. 493.) This had nothing whatever to do, 
nor did the Evangelist imagine it to have any thing to 
do, with the stabbing of the side of Jesus by the spear 
of a Roman soldier. But the words occurred to his 
memory as he wrote, and he set them down, as a rhe- 
torical accommodation, not as a mystical criticism. 

XX. 9. 

As yet they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again 
from the dead. 

No wonder if they did not understand the Scripture 
as declaring that the Messiah was to rise again from 
the dead. For nowhere had the Old Testament Scrip- 
ture so declared. But this was not the Apostle's 
meaning. What he meant was, that they hitherto so 
interpreted the Scriptures, as to make it incredible to 
them that the Messiah should suffer and die, which 
death was indispensable to his rising again. Like 
others of the most religious part of their countrymen 
at that period, they erroneously ascribed to the later 
writers of their nation, the Psalmists and the Prophets, 
an authority similar to that of the original revelation 
embodied in the Law of Moses. The Psalmists and 
Prophets had erroneously spoken of the Messiah as a 



I. 15-22.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 187 

magnificent, and sometimes, perhaps, as an immortal 
prince, in such terms as to misguide the opinions of 
simple men, of the class to which John and Peter be- 
longed. Possessed with these views of the authority 
and interpretation of the national writings later than 
Moses, — their minds occupied with incorrect concep- 
tions of the Messiah drawn from those writings, — " as 
yet they knew not the Scripture " in such a manner 
as to allow them to entertain the idea " that he must 
rise again from the dead." They had not learned to 
reconcile the Scripture with that idea. It was not 
that Scripture had declared that he would so rise. It 
had declared nothing of the kind. But they supposed 
that it had authoritatively declared the contrary. And 
this confounded them. (Comp. Mark ix. 32.) After- 
wards they knew better. (Also with ypa$r\ comp. ye- 
ypa/jufievov, as explained above, p. 117.) 



SECTION V. 

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 



I. 15-22. 

In those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and 

said, " Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs 

have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of 
David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to 

them that took Jesus For it is written in the book of 

Psalms, ' Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell 
therein ' ; and ; His bishopric let another take.' Wherefore 

of these men must one be ordained to be a witness 

with us of his resurrection." 

Peter quoted on this occasion from two of the vitu- 
perative Psalms (lxix., cix.). Nothing more is necessary 



188 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 15-22. 

than to read them, to be satisfied that in neither had the 
writer any reference to Judas, or to any future person, 
but that both, on the contrary, contained the expression 
of personal resentment against personal enemies. In 
one, the quotation is by no means exact ; so far from it, 
that, instead of a single person being spoken of, — a 
point most material for the common explanation, — the 
language of the original is, " Let their habitation be 
desolate, and let none dwell in their tents." In both, 
if Judas was intended at all, he was intended through- 
out, for the same person or persons are spoken of from 
the beginning to the end of the compositions respec- 
tively. What harm had Judas done to the writer of 
these poems % Yet the persons of whom it is wished 
that their " habitation " may " be desolate " (lxix. 25), 
and that another may " take their office " (cix. 8), are 
the same who had given to one writer " gall for his 
meat," and " vinegar to drink" in his thirst (lxix. 21), 
and who had opened against the other " the mouth of 
the deceitful," and spoken against him " with a lying 
tongue " (cix. 2). 

But the case is too plain for argument. All that is 
requisite, in order to be satisfied what the original 
writers intended, is to read their poems with an un- 
biased mind. As to Peter's purpose in quoting from 
them, I think it is somewhat lost sight of in conse- 
quence of incorrect punctuation and translation of his 
words, as recorded by Luke. I would represent the 
first of the sentences containing Peter's proposal thus : 
" Men and brethren, the Scripture which the Holy 
Spirit by the mouth of David anciently spoke, must 
needs be fulfilled concerning Judas [must have a ful- 
filment in Judas], who was guide to them that took 
Jesus." What was this Scripture \ It consisted in 
periods which he quotes, relating to vacating a place, 



II. 14-21.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 189 

and being superseded in it by another : " Let his hab- 
itation be desolate," and, " His bishopric let another 
take." And how was that Scripture to be fulfilled ? 
By proceeding, as Peter proposes, to an election to fill 

the vacant office : " Of these men must one be 

ordained to be a witness with us." 

" This Scripture must needs be fulfilled con- 
cerning Judas," &c. Rather, it is Jit, or it has become 
fit, that the words should be verified in the case of Ju- 
das ; that is, by the filling of his office. The word 
rendered " must needs," is the same common word 
(Zhei) which in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians 
(ii. 3), for instance, is rendered, " I ought to rejoice," 
or it is fit that I should rejoice. 

" This Scripture which the Holy Ghost by 

the mouth of David spake before." Spake before 
{wpoelire) signifies spoke formerly or anciently. (See 
2 Cor. vii. 3 ; Gal. i. 9, v. 21 ; 1 Thes. iv. 6 ; Heb. x. 
15.) — The Holy Ghost spake by the mouth of David ; 
that is, the spirit of holy indignation in David's heart 
gave itself utterance in these words of his. We say, 
a patriotic, a devout, a selfish, a treacherous spirit 
spoke by a man, meaning that the man gave utterance 
to such a spirit, that he spoke in such a frame of mind. 
We say, " There spoke the spirit of martyrdom " ; 
" There was the utterance of the spirit of '76." 

II. 14-21. 

Peter, standing up with the eleven, lift up his voice, and said 
unto them, " Ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell at Je- 
rusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words : 
for these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the 
third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by 
the prophet Joel : " And it shall come to pass in the last days, 
(saith God,) I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh : and 
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young 



190 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 14-21. 

men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams : 
and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out 
in those days of my Spirit ; and they shall prophesy : and I 
will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth 
beneath ; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke : the sun 
shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before 
that great and notable day of the Lord come : and it shall 
come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the 
Lord shall be saved." 

Peter's quotation from the prophecy of Joel (ii. 28 
- 32), for the most part, follows the original. The 
principal deviations are the addition of the words, 
" and they shall prophesy" (Acts ii. 18), and the trans- 
position of two clauses at the end of the next preced- 
ing verse. 

After the effusion of the spirit on the day of Pente- 
cost, the disciples " began to speak with other tongues " 
(Ibid. 4). " This," said Peter, " is that which was 
spoken by the prophet Joel." 

What was his meaning in this/? Did he mean that 
Joel, by supernatural foresight, had predicted the 
events of that day, and that his prediction had come 
to pass % How could that be 1 What " young men " 
appeared to have " seen visions," and " old men " to 
have " dreamed dreams " % Where were the " wonders 
in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath " \ 
Where the "blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke" 1 ? 
When had the sun been " turned into darkness, and 
the moon into blood " % 

Nothing of this sort was Peter's meaning. Had 
Joel's language been supernatural prediction, it must 
have been exact and infallible, and it must have been 
precisely fulfilled. Had there been any such precise 
fulfilment 1 The narrative answers that question. 

The fact simply was, that Joel, referring to the ad- 
vent of the future Messiah, of whose character and 



II. 14-21.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 191 

office lie had but imperfect and erroneous conceptions, 
had indulged himself in a pomp and prodigality of 
poetical imagery. But still what he had intended to 
speak of was the Messiah's advent. So Peter cor- 
rectly understood him. Now the Messiah's advent had 
actually taken place. And it was for Peter, on the 
day of Pentecost, to announce that it had taken place. 
And when, the attention of the crowd having been 
fixed by the manifest miracle, he came forward and 
declared, " This is that which was spoken by the 
prophet Joel," what he meant to say, and all that he 
meant to say, was this : Behold, that time of the Mes- 
siah at length has come, which every Jew has for ages 
been expecting, and of which Joel, with his obscure 
conception of it, spoke thus in his boldly figurative 
language, eight centuries ago. 

In or before Hezekiah's time, Joel, having no more 
knowledge on the subject than his contemporaries, but 
speaking the common sense of the nation, anticipated 
the Messiah's coming, and, in the use of a common 
expedient of the poetical art, represented God as pre- 
announcing it. (Joelii. 19 etseq.; comp. "Lectures," &c., 
Vol. II. pp. 433, 434.) In the same vein of poetical 
amplification, he depicted it as destined to be attended 
with certain striking physical phenomena (Joel ii. 
30, 31 ; comp. « Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 328 - 330) ; 
phenomena which nobody pretends to have in fact oc- 
curred coincidently with the appearance of Jesus. To 
the multitude at Jerusalem, seven or eight hundred 
years after Joel, Peter declared that the event referred 
to by Joel had taken place. But he did not pretend 
to prove what he said by showing that a supernatural 
prediction had been fulfilled. Considered as super- 
natural prediction, the words of Joel had by no means 
been fulfilled. We cannot look at them — Peter 



192 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 25-32. 

could not have looked at them — in that light ; for, 
taken literally, we must own that they had been falsi- 
fied (Acts ii. 19, 20). Peter's proof of what he has 
announced is not at all of that sort. Having declared, 
in the use of the passage from Joel, that the Messiah 
had come, — " this is that which was spoken by the 
prophet Joel" (ii. 16), — he goes on to establish it 
(ii. 22, 24, 40) by quite other kinds of proof than 
by appeals to prophecy ; viz. by pointing to Christ's 
supernatural works (" Jesus of Nazareth, a man ap- 
proved of God among you by miracles, and ivonders, 
and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, 
as ye yourselves do know ") ; by bearing witness to his 
resurrection from the grave (" whom God hath raised 
up, having loosed the pains of death ") ; and by meth- 
ods of conviction which are not specified in the record 
(" with many other words did he testify "). 

In connection with these first specimens of the 
preaching of Apostles to unbelievers, after the death 
of their Master, I submit this question : If the Apos- 
tles believed that the evidence from predictions of the 
Jewish prophets made part of the evidence of Chris- 
tianity, why did they not more frequently adduce it I 
why did they not call attention to more of those 
numerous passages, which, to later commentators, 
have seemed so important ? for though miracles 
might safely be left to speak for themselves, prophe- 
cies would be but too likely to escape attention, unless 
pointed out. 

II. 25-32. 

David speaketh concerning him, " I foresaw the Lord always 
before my face ; for he is on my right hand, that I should 
not be moved : therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue 
was glad : moreover, also, my flesh shall rest in hope ; be- 



11.25-32.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 193 

cause thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou 
suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou hast made 
known to me the ways of life ; thou shalt make me full of 
joy with thy countenance. Men and brethren, let me freely 
speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead 
and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. 
Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn 
with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins one should 
sit on his throne ; he, seeing this before, spake of the res- 
urrection of Christ, that he was not left in hell, neither his 
flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, 
whereof we all are witnesses." 

Peter quotes from a Psalm (xvi. 8-11). I think 
that he understood the passage to have referred, in its 
original meaning, to the Messiah, and that he was right 
in so understanding it. I do not suppose that Peter 
regarded the writer of that Psalm as having possessed 
any knowledge respecting the Messiah's resurrection 
from the grave, or any knowledge concerning him not 
generally possessed by his countrymen in the same 
age, or any supernatural knowledge on any subject. 

Elsewhere (" Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. pp. 319, 320) 
I have used the following language : — 

" I conceive that in this Psalm Ave have an expression 
of the sentiments, purposes, and hopes of David, and 
that he speaks not at all in the person of the Messiah, 
but in his own person. At the same time, I think 
that in the latter part of the Psalm he had in view 
the expected advent of his greater successor, and 
that accordingly the Apostles Peter and Paul put the 
natural and correct construction upon his words in 
their original meaning, when they declared him to 
have referred therein to the " raising up " of the 
future Messiah. I take the case to have been this. 
Possessed with the opinion, current in his nation, that 
the splendid fortunes understood to await it were to 
be enjoyed through the instrumentality of an illustri- 
17 



194 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 25-32. 

cms monarch of his own line, David, in expressing his 
grateful sense of the various goodness of God which 
had distinguished him, is led especially to rejoice that 
his glory is not to pass away with his life ; but that 
he is to enjoy a virtual immortality in his greater 
offspring. Recognizing Jehovah as being on his right 
hand, his immovable champion, he feels that his pros- 
perity is perennial and secure. His heart is glad, 
and his spirit rejoices, in the thought, that death, the 
universal leveller, cannot prostrate him. He will lay 
down his body to its last rest in hope, for he knows 
that he is not to lie down to nothingness and oblivion. 
He will not be wholly abandoned to the grave ; the 
greatness of David will not be all swallowed in the 
pit. He will revive in his magnificent son ; a living 
branch will be made to spring from the dead root ; 
and thus, though compelled, like others, to undergo in 
his own person the sentence of mortality, God will 
lead him, in the person of his descendant and repre- 
sentative, along the ways of life and action. Full, 
therefore, shall be his joy in Him who is thus present 
with him at all times ; endless his satisfactions in the 
Divine Protector for ever at his right hand. This con- 
ception (by no means violent, or transcending very 
narrow limits of the license of poetry) of life renewed 
and prolonged in one's descendants, is the same which 
has been already remarked upon as expressed in other 
Psalms." (Comp. "Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. pp. 311, 
318 ; also 2 Sam. vii. 12 - 16 ; 1 Kings xi. 36 ; 2 Kings 
viii. 19.) 

I suppose that this is the correct construction of 
this ode, and that it was the construction put upon it 
by Peter. That Apostle, I conceive, argued to the fol- 
lowing effect : — 

" David was speaking (Acts ii. 25) concerning him 



II. 25-32.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 195 

[with reference to the future Christ, when he said], 
' I foresaw the Lord,' " &c. The royal poet could not 
have been speaking of himself with strict individual 
reference ; for, as we all know, he was mortal ; " he is 
both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto 
this day " (29). When David said that he was not to 
die, he must have meant that he was to have a con- 
tinued life in his offspring. He was persuaded that 
from his posterity God would raise up Christ to " sit 
on his throne " (30), and when he rejoiced that God 
would not give him up to the grave, nor suffer him to 
see the pit, he must be understood to have been speak- 
ing " of the resurrection [rather, of the raising up] of 
Christ" (31). " This Jesus hath God raised up [that 
is, This Christ, even Jesus, hath God now raised up, 
or, This Christ hath God now raised up, in the person 
of Jesus], whereof we all are witnesses " (32). 

Such I take to have been Peter's exposition of the 
passage which he quotes, — a correct exposition of 
the sense which David, the writer of the Psalm, in- 
tended to express. And if so, Peter does not ascribe 
to David any supernatural knowledge concerning the 
resurrection of Jesus, nor any knowledge or opinion 
whatever respecting the future Christ, which was not 
shared by David's contemporaries. 

"David speaketh concerning him" (ii. 25); that is, 
with reference to the Messiah's advent, as I have ren- 
dered it above, in conformity with the common version. 
If, instead of " concerning him " (m clvtov), we should 
read concerning himself (eU avrov), we should then un- 
derstand Peter as saying that David applied the words 
quoted to himself, in reference to the immortality 
which awaited him in his offspring. 

"My flesh shall rest in hope (lir ekiflBi, HmS) ; 
hecause (ore, O) thou wilt not leave my soul (i. e. me) 



196 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [11.25-32. 

in the pit," &c. (26, 27). I am much inclined to ren- 
der these words thus : " My flesh shall rest (or, repose) 
upon the hope, that thou wilt not leave," &c. 

" Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see cor- 
ruption" (27; comp. Deut. xvii. 20; Ps. xxxvii. 28). 
On my interpretation, David calls himself God's " holy 
one," or saint. There was no singularity in his giving 
himself that title (comp. Deut. xxxiii. 8 ; 2 Chron. 
vi. 41 ; Ps. xxx. 4, xxxvii. 28, lxxxvi. 2, lxxxix. 19), 
though in fact the genuine original of the Hebrew 
was probably in the plural number, " thy holy ones." 

" Therefore, being a prophet" (30). The Old Testa- 
ment history nowhere represents David as possessing 
supernatural foreknowledge, or any supernatural en- 
dowment or prerogative. On the contrary, it repre- 
sents the prophet Nathan as the medium of Divine 
communications to him (2 Sam. vii. 4 et seq.), and 
where the strongest encomium is passed upon him, no 
such character is attributed (ibid, xxiii. 1). David is 
said to speak as " a prophet," in the sense that in the 
words quoted he spoke, not (as at first view might 
seem) of present time, but (not supernaturally, how- 
ever) of future. (See above, pp. 73, 174 - 177.) The 
very clause refers to what (if we credit the history) he 
did not become acquainted with by inspiration of his 
own, but by a message through Nathan (2 Sam. vii. 
11, 12). 

" Knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, 
that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he 
would raise up Christ, to sit on his throne," &c. (30). 

The genuine reading here is, " that of the fruit of 
his loins one should sit on his throne," or " that of 
the fruit of his loins He (God) would seat one on his 
throne." The Greek answering to the intervening 
words in the received text is spurious. (Comp. Gries- 



11.25-32.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 197 

bach, " Nov. Test.," ad loc). — The word rendered 
" knowing " (etSw?) sometimes means no more than 
being persuaded, without implying any thing respecting 
the correctness of the persuasion (comp. olha, Acts xx. 
25). — " Knowing (or persuaded) that God had sworn 
with an oath to him " ; that is, persuaded, like his con- 
temporaries, that it was God's solemn and fixed pur- 
pose concerning him. The phraseology in which this 
purpose is represented as taking the form of an oath 
is derived from one of the Psalms (cxxxii. 11 ; comp. 
ex. 4; also, "Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. pp. 310, 315). 
— Peter's sense is conveyed, I suppose, in the follow- 
ing paraphrase : David, speaking, in the Psalm quoted, 
of the future, and persuaded that it was the Divine 
purpose that the Messiah should be his descendant 
(since, in his mind, the prophet predicted by Moses 
was identified with a monarch of his own race), had 
in view the coming of that Christ whose actual com- 
ing I and my fellow-Apostles now announce. 

" He, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of 
Christ" (31). The Greek word (avaarda^) is not, I 
suppose, correctly translated here " resurrection." Its 
primitive meaning — raising up — is equally applica- 
ble to a revival from the dead (or resurrection), and to 
a being brought into the world, or elevated to some 
conspicuous service (comp. Judges ii. 16, 18, iii. 15 ; 
Acts xiii. 22, et al. h. m.). The context, I think, de- 
termines the latter to be the true sense in the present 
instance. " The Lord thy God," Moses had said 
(Deut. xviii. 15), " will raise up unto thee a prophet 

from the midst of thee ; unto him ye shall 

hearken." " This Jesus hath God raised up" now says 
Peter (Acts ii. 32), " whereof we all are witnesses." 
It was not a resurrection of the Messiah from the grave 
that Moses spoke of, or that Peter spoke of, taking up 
17* 



198 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [11.25-32. 

Moses's words, but the Messiah's coming into the ivorld, 
and assuming his office (comp. iii. 22, 26). And to 
this raising up, this coming of the Messiah, and not 
his resurrection, it is quite evident to me that Peter 
declared David to have referred in the words quoted 
by Peter from David's Psalm (ii. 30, 31). 

This, which I do not remember to have seen else- 
where stated, seems to me certain. One part of the 
context may appear to the reader to conflict with it. 

" Him ye have taken," it is said, " and by wicked 

hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised 
up, having loosed the pains of death" (ii. 23, 24). 
Here, it may be urged, the raising up spoken of is speci- 
fied as being from the grave. I answer, — 1. Suppose 
it is so, how does that fact control the interpretation of 
the rest of the passage ^ Jesus was raised up as the 
Messiah, and he had a resurrection from the grave ; 
and the word used by Peter {avecrr^ae) is equally appli- 
cable to both. That the respective contexts should 
determine the word to have the one signification in one 
verse, and the other in another, is nothing surprising. 
But, 2. I am by no means certain that the fact is as 
assumed. I do not know but that Peter, when he said 
that God had "raised up" Jesus, "having loosed the 
pains of death," meant to refer to him as being raised 
up in the sense which I have given to the expression 
in the following verses. Jesus had been put to death ; 
" by wicked hands " he had been " crucified and slain." 
If God meant to raise him up in the office and dignity 
of Messiah, it could only be by " loosing the pains of 
death " for him. And accordingly there would be noth- 
ing unnatural in construing the words raised up in this 
verse precisely as in those on which I have remarked 
at length. Jesus, says the Apostle, " by wicked hands " 
was " crucified and slain." But God has restored him 



II. 34-36.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 199 

to life, and so, in despite of the murderous malice of 
his enemies, has fulfilled the promise made to Moses, 
of raising up the Messiah. It is true he was crucified. 
But that did not put an end to his claim. God raised 
him to the office of Messiah, notwithstanding. 

II. 34-36. 

David is not ascended into the heavens : but he saith himself, 
" The Lord said unto my Lord, i Sit thou on my right hand, 
until I make thy foes thy footstool.' " Therefore let all the 
house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that 
same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. 

The quotation is from a Psalm, in which I under- 
stand David to have referred to the exaltation of his 
great expected successor. (See Ps. ex. 1 ; above, p. 
107; "Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. pp. 314-316.) I 
paraphrase Peter's words as follows : — 

" Being by the right hand of God exalted," I say 
(ii. 33) ; for he is exalted by God to be the medium of 
his spiritual communications to men ; and to him ac- 
cordingly may be fitly applied those words of David, 
" The Lord said unto my Lord, ' Sit thou on my right 
hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool.' " Those 
words, indeed, originally, — though in a lower sense, 
— must be understood to have been spoken by David 
concerning the Messiah whom he looked for. It is 
impossible to suppose that he had himself in view, for 
he was merely a great monarch ; nor in any sense 
naturally conveyed by the words can he be said to have 
ascended into heaven, or to have sat down at God's right 
hand (34, 35). In view, then, of the miracle now 
wrought before your eyes (2-4, 33), and of the other 
supernatural works of Jesus to which I have called 
your attention (22), let all the nation of Israel be as- 
suredly persuaded that that Jesus, whom they have just 



200 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 18. 

put to death by crucifixion, was no other than the 
august personage whom under the name of Christ 
(31) and of Lord (34) their fathers and they have for 
ages been looking for (36). 

III. 18. 

Those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of 
all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. 

The word here translated " suffer " does not neces- 
sarily signify painful experience. It denotes simply 
experience of whichsoever kind. The prophets (or 
preachers) had spoken of the coming of Christ, ac- 
cording to their conceptions of him. In part (so far 
as they relied on and reproduced the revelation by 
Moses) they had spoken correctly, in part they had 
spoken incorrectly, of the future Christ's experiences, 
— of his position, office, and agency. So far as they 
had spoken correctly, God " had showed by their 
mouth," because he had showed by the mouth of 
Moses, whose representation their representations did 
but repeat. They had not represented the Christ as 
destined to be outraged and put to a violent death, as 
Jesus was. Such was by no means their idea of him. 
What they had said of his greatness and exaltation, of 
the things " that Christ should experience," and the 
empire he should attain, God had now brought to pass 
in a way which they had by no means looked for. 
Their anticipations of a dominion for their hero, says 
Peter, God " hath so fulfilled," fulfilled in this unex- 
pected way, allotting a life of hardship to his beloved 
Son, and a cruel death to " the Prince of Life" (15). 

III. 21. 

Whom the heaven must receive, until the times of restitution 
of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of his 
holy prophets, since the world began. 



III. 22-26.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 201 

" Whom the heaven must receive." He is ho earthly 
ruler, as has been thought (comp. Acts i. 6). He has 
been taken to heaven, and is invisible there. Nor 
will he any more be made manifest, except in that 
establishment of his kingdom which will take place 
when his religion supersedes Judaism. For " restitu- 
tion " {anTOKaraGTaai^ I would rather read accomplish- 
ment, or consummation (see, however, Matt. xvii. 11, 
and comp. Mai. iv. 5, 6). — " God hath spoken by the 
mouth of his holy prophets." I have remarked on the 
same expression above (p. 200). — " Since the world 
(alwv) began." The " world " here spoken of, I take 
to be the age of the Jewish dispensation (see above, 
p. 78). 

III. 22-26. 

Moses truly said unto the fathers, " A prophet shall the Lord 
your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto 
me ; him shall ye hear in all thinga whatsoever he shall say 
unto you. And it shall come to pass, that every soul which 
will not hear that Prophet shall be destroyed from among 
the people." Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel, 
and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have 
likewise told of these days. Ye are the children of the 
prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our 
fathers, saying unto Abraham, " And in thy seed shall all the 
kindreds of the earth be blessed." Unto you first, God, hav- 
ing raised up his Son, sent him to bless you, in turning 
away every one of you from his iniquities. 

I regard this passage as very expressly confirming 
that view which I have taken repeated occasion to 
state and maintain, respecting the promise through 
Moses of a " prophet " (or teacher) to be " raised up " 
in future time (Deut. xviii. 15), as being the foundation 
and germ of the Jewish conception of the Messiah, 
entertained through the series of later ages. 

I have spoken, says Peter, of the state of things 



202 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 11. 

now opening, as the accomplishment of what your 
teachers have had in view " since the world began " 
(21), — ever since the institution of the Jewish pecu- 
liarity ; since the age began, I say, for Moses himself, 
who laid its foundations, " said to the fathers " of the 
race, " A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto 
you," &c. (22, 23). And that same event which Moses 
thus foretold has (with whatever mixture of error 
with his truth) been had in view, on his authority, by 
the whole succession of teachers of our nation since 
his time ; " as many as have spoken have likewise 
foretold of these days " ; this advent of Jesus, and 
nothing different or future, fulfils whatever has been 
truly anticipated respecting the setting up of the Mes- 
siah's reign (24). To you, successors of the teachers 
and of the patriarchs, is it granted now to experience 
the fulfilment of that other promise made by God to 
the founder of your race, when he said, " In thy seed 
shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed." God 
promised by Moses that he would " raise up a prophet " 
(Deut. xviii. 15) ; he hath done so, " having raised up 
his Son," Jesus. He promised to Abraham, " In thy 
seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed" 
(Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18). He hath made this promise 
good, in that he hath sent a spiritual deliverer, a bearer 
of the richest of all blessings, — in that, " having 
raised up his Son (Jesus), he hath sent him to bless 
you" To " bless you," how % He defines the way, 
left undefined in the original promise. It was, by 
" turning away every one of you from his iniquities." 

IV. 11. 

This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, 
which is become the head of the corner. 

See above, p. 103. To Jesus, says Peter, well may 
the language of the Psalmist (cxviii. 22) be applied. 



IV. 24-28.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 203 

IV. 24-28. 

They lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, 
"Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, 
and the sea, and all that in them is ; who by the mouth of 
thy servant David hast said, ' Why did the heathen rage, 
and the people imagine vain things ? The kings of the 
earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against 
the Lord, and against his Christ.' For of a truth, against thy 
holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and 
Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel 
were gathered together in this city, for to do whatsoever thy 
hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." 

Peter and John first glorify in their own language 
the power of God, which had now rescued them from 
danger, and on which they relied for protection for the 
future : " Lord, thou art God," &c. (24). They next 
(25, 26) glorify it in the language used by David in 
one of his Psalms (ii. 1, 2; comp. "Lectures," &c., 
Vol. IV. pp. 316-318). And they show how that 
language is applicable to the event to which they 
apply it. " By the mouth of his servant David " 
God had said [David had poetically exhibited God as 
saying], " Why do the heathen rage, and the people 
imagine vain things 1 " so now, say the Apostles (Acts 
iv. 27), " the Gentiles and the people of Israel were 
gathered together." " The kings of the earth stood 
up," said the Psalmist, " and the rulers were gathered 
together " ; " both Herod and Pontius Pilate" say the 
Apostles (ibid.), — the first a king, the second a gov- 
ernor, — have now been "gathered together." They 
conspired, said the Psalmist, " against the Lord and 
against his anointed " ; here, again, say the Apostles 
(27), David's words are precisely in point ; for king 
and ruler, heathen and people, have combined against 
God's holy anointed child [or, servant] Jesus. — And 
then, to guard against any such unfavorable conclusion 



204 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VII. 2,3. 

as the Jews were wont to draw from Jesus's having 
been punished as a malefactor, they add that this ex- 
traordinary catastrophe was in accordance with God's 
mysterious purposes ; — " for to do whatsoever thy 
hand and thy counsel determined before to be done " 
(28 ; comp. ii. 23). 

VII. 2, 3. 

The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he 
was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said 
unto him, " Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kin- 
dred, and come into the land which I shall show thee." 

The discourse of Stephen, in this chapter, contains 
a recital of many of the most prominent events of the 
early Jewish history, with frequent quotations, more or 
less formal, of the language of the early writers. 
Several of them I shall pass over, as not affording 
occasion for any special remark. Some of the quota- 
tions differ from the original, either in the way of ad- 
dition, omission, or change ; and some of the state- 
ments of fact vary from the corresponding ones made 
by the Old Testament writer. We have no means of 
determining whether these inaccuracies are to be re- 
ferred to Stephen, to Luke, who undertook to record 
his words, or to the person, whoever he was, who 
heard and reported them to Luke. But the necessary 
inference from them appears to be, that, at least in 
some stage of the transmission, there was not that 
precise regard to the language of the Old Testament 
writers, which would have been inseparable from the 
opinion, had it existed, that that language was dictated 
by unerring inspiration. 

In the text above, it is in contradiction to the his- 
tory (Gen. xi. 31 -xii. 1), that the Divine summons is 
said to have been addressed to Abraham, " when he 



VII. 14.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 205 

was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran " ; 
and in the quotation, the words of the original, " and 
from thy father's house," are omitted, and the words 
" and come " are inserted in the last clause, in their 
place. 

VII. 4. 

From thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into 
this land. 

But, according to the statement in the history, Abra- 
ham was born when Terah, his father, was seventy 
years old (Gen. xi. 26), or thereabouts, and he left Ha- 
ran when himself " seventy and five years old " (ibid, 
xii. 4) ; when Terah, therefore, had about reached his 
one hundred and forty-fifth year. But Terah lived to 
be two hundred and five years old (ibid. xi. 32). It 
was not, therefore, according to the history, after Te- 
rah's death, but not far from sixty years before it, that 
Abraham migrated to Canaan. 

VII. 6, 7. 

And God spake on this wise : that his seed should sojourn in a 
strange land, and that they should bring them into bondage, 
and entreat them evil four hundred years. " And the nation to 
whom they shall be in bondage will I judge," said God ; " and 
after that shall they come forth, and serve me in this place." 

The quotation is from Genesis (xv. 13, 14), where we 
read " with great substance," instead of " and serve 
me in this place," which latter words seem to be taken 
from the account of the commission to Moses (Exod. 
iii. 12). Comp. Exod. xii. 40, 41; "Lectures," &c, 
Vol. I. p. 140. 

VII. 14. 

Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all 
his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls. 
18 



206 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VII. 16. 

In the history (Gen. xlvi. 27) the whole family of 
Jacob, including Joseph with his wife and sons, is 
reckoned to have been seventy in number. But the 
Septuagint version of the same passage gives Joseph 
nine sons, and, with Stephen, calls the whole number 
seventy-five. 

VII. 16. 

The sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the 
sons of Emmor, the father of Sychem. 

Here is a confusion of two facts recorded in the 
history. It was Jacob, not Abraham, who " bought a 

parcel of a field at the hand of the children of 

Hamor, Shechem's father," and that not for a tomb, 
but for an altar (Gen. xxxiii. 19, 20). The sepulchre 
in which Jacob directed that his body should be laid 
was that of " Machpelah, which is before Mamre," 
bought by Abraham of Ephron, the Hittite (Gen. xlix. 
29, 30 ; comp. xxiii. 3 - 20, 1. 12, 13). On the other 
hand, according to the record in the Book of Joshua 
(xxiv. 32), Joseph was actually buried in the place 
which the discourse of Stephen indicates. 

VII. 26. 

Sirs, ye are brethren ; why do ye wrong one to another ? 

The language of Moses, as recorded in the history, 
was, " "Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow % " (Exod. 
ii. 13.) 

VII. 37. 

This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, " A 
prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you of your breth- 
ren, like unto me ; him shall ye hear." 

Another express instance of that fact which I con- 
sider to be vital to a correct explanation of the rela- 



VII. 4.8-50.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. m 207 

tion of the New Testament to the Old, namely, the 
identification, in the minds of the early disciples, of the 
Prophet promised by Moses with that Messiah whom 
they declared Jesus to be. 

VII. 42, 43. 

Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of 
heaven ; as it is written in the book of the prophets, " O ye 
house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts, and sacri- 
fices, by the space of forty years in the wilderness ? Yea, 
ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your 
god Remphan, figures which ye made, to worship them : and 
I will carry you away beyond Babylon." 

The quotation, from the prophet Amos (v. 25 - 27), 
is made, like so many others in the New Testament, 
with a want of exactness quite inconsistent with the 
supposition of such a sanctity being attached to the 
words, as would have belonged to them had they been 
regarded as words uttered by Divine inspiration or 
suggestion. In " Remphan " (Acts vii. 43), compared 
with " Chiun " (Amos v. 26), the popular commenta- 
tors have been forced by their own principles to recog- 
nize a troublesome problem ; the former reading has 
a near resemblance to that of the Septuagint. " Be- 
yond Babylon " (Acts vii. 43), instead of " beyond Da- 
mascus " (Amos v. 27), is a very material alteration 
of the prophet's words. (Comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. 
II. p. 401.) 

VII. 48-50. 

The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; as 
saith the prophet, " Heaven is my throne, and earth is my 
footstool : what house will ye build me ? saith the Lord ; or, 
what is the place of my rest ? Hath not my hand made all 
these things ? " 

The words are quoted from the pseudo-Isaiah (lxvi. 
1, 2), with no important change. 



208 . NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [VII. 52. 

VII. 52. 

Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted ? and 
they have slain them which showed before of the coming of 
the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and 
murderers. 

We see here the exaggerated representation of strong 
emotion. Regarded as a precise statement of fact, it 
would not be borne out by the Old Testament records. 

VIII. 32-35. 

The place of the Scripture which he read was this : " He was 
led as a sheep to the slaughter ; and like a lamb dumb before 
his shearer, so opened he not his mouth : in his humiliation 
his judgment was taken away : and who shall declare his 
generation ? for his life is taken from the earth." And the 
eunuch answered Philip, and said, " I pray thee, of whom 
speaketh the prophet this ? of himself, or of some other 
man ? " Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the 
same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. 

The quotation is from the prophecy of Isaiah (liii. 
7, 8). I have elsewhere expressed my opinion (" Lec- 
tures," &c, Vol. III. pp. 255-259) that, in the pas- 
sage to which it belongs, the writer, without any su- 
pernatural knowledge whatever respecting the future 
condition of Jesus of Nazareth, was referring to the 
expected Messiah in terms according with the concep- 
tion entertained of that personage by himself in com- 
mon with his contemporaries. When the Ethiopian 
officer asked Philip, " Of whom speaketh the prophet 
this 1 " Philip, we are told, " opened his mouth, and 
began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him 
Jesus." That is, I presume, Philip explained the 
passage in the way that I have done. Believing that 
to be the true exposition, I must needs suppose it to 
have been Philip's, if he was a correct interpreter. 
Philip, I suppose, replied to the Ethiopian, " The proph- 



X. 43.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 209 

et is speaking, not by any miraculous foresight, but as 
any of his contemporaries might have spoken, of that 
illustrious personage called by our nation the Messiah, 
who was predicted by our lawgiver Moses, and who was 
expected by every Jew in this writer's time." Philip 
seized the happy occasion to impress the Ethiopian 
courtier's mind. He " preached unto him Jesus." 
" At last," said he, " in this age of ours, has appeared, 
in the person of Jesus, that Messiah of whom the an- 
cient prophet spoke." " He began at the same Scrip- 
ture " the discourse with which he undertook to en- 
force that truth. It was a Scripture that afforded a 
good opening and introduction to such a discourse. 
How the discourse proceeded, what topics it embraced, 
what methods of conviction it employed, we are not 
told ; but only that it was so satisfactory and persua- 
sive as to bring the officer to desire to be baptized in 
token of his faith in Jesus (36). 

X. 14. 

Peter said, "I have never eaten any thing that is com- 
mon or unclean." 

See Lev. xi., xx. 25 ; comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. 
I.pp. 266-273. 

X. 43. 

To him give all the prophets witness, that, through his name, 
whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. 

With that reign of the Messiah which they looked 
for, the ancient writers of the nation had constantly 
connected the idea of a moral reformation, and conse- 
quent Divine forgiveness and favor. (See, e. g., Is. lix. 
20; Jer. xxxi. 34; Dan. ix. 24; Mic. vii. 18; Zech. 
xiii. 1; Mai. iv. 2; comp. Matt. iii. 2, iv. 17; Acts 
xi. 18.) That Messiah, whose followers they repre- 
18* 



210 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIII. 20. 

sented as having their sins remitted, has appeared, 
says Peter, in the person of Jesus, whom we preach ; 
but that remission of sins, he adds, is only to be ob- 
tained by any one, by believing in Jesus and becoming 
his disciple. 

XIII. 20. 

He gave unto them judges, about the space of four hundred and 
fifty years, until Samuel the prophet. 

Comp. "Lectures," &c, Vol. II. p. 130. 
XIII. 22. 

He raised up unto them David to be their king ; to whom also 
he gave testimony, and said, " I have found David the son 
of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all 
my will." 

Paul would never have quoted so inaccurately from 
the Old Testament writings, if he had entertained that 
opinion respecting their authority, which has been 
held by Christian commentators. (See 1 Sam. xiii. 
14 ; Ps. lxxxix. 20, 21 ; and comp. " Lectures," &c, 
Vol. III. pp. 41-43.) 

XIII. 23. 

Of this man's seed hath God, according to his promise, brought 
unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus. 

God had promised to raise unto Israel a Saviour 
(Deut. xviii. 15), and a Saviour, as Paul says, he had 
now sent in the person of Jesus. He had raised him 
up, Paul adds, among the descendants of David; but 
this is no part of what he had promised, or of what 
Paul says that he had promised. — " Of this man's 
seed." I have remarked elsewhere (see above, p. 14) 
on Paul's avoidance of the expression " Son of David." 



XIII. 32,33.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 211 

XIII. 27. 

They that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they 
knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are 
read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in con- 
demning him. 

How did the condemnation of Jesus fulfil the proph- 
ets % Not because those writers foretold his condem- 
nation. It is impossible to find such a prediction in 
their writings. But they had expatiated on the glories 
of a coming kingdom of the Messiah ; and as to the 
reality of that dominion they had spoken correctly, 
though they misunderstood its nature. The Messiah's 
kingdom had at length been established. Its estab- 
lishment had been brought about by a means which 
they had no conception of, namely, the condemnation 
and death of Jesus. In this sense that condemnation 
had fulfilled " the voices of the prophets," which voices 
the Jewish contemporaries of Paul " knew not " in 
any such manner as to discern the basis of truth that 
lay in them. They embraced the erroneous accident, 
and overlooked the essential substance. 

XIII. 29. 

When they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took 
him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre. 

For the meaning which, on the whole, I think 
should be put upon the word " written," in this place, 
see above, p. 117. The sentence may be explained, 
however, in the same manner as the text last com- 
mented upon. 

XIII. 32, 33. 

The promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath ful- 
filled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised 
up Jesus again ; as it is also written in the first Psalm, 
" Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." 



212 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIII. 32, 33. 

" The promise which was made unto the fathers," I 
take to be that made through Moses, " A prophet 
shall the Lord your God raise up" &c. (Deut. xviii. 15). 
" God hath fulfilled the same," says Paul, " unto us 
their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus " ; that 
is, sent him into the world. The word " again," in our 
version, indicating that it is the resurrection of Jesus 
from the dead to which Paul refers, is not in the origi- 
nal, but is superfluous and misleading. (Comp. Acts 
xiii. 23, 24.) The raising of Jesus "from the dead" 
was a different thing, of which Paul proceeds to speak 
in the next verse. 

"As it is also written in the first Psalm (ii. 7), ' Thou 
art my Son, this day have I begotten thee ' [or, ' this 
day have I made thee so ']." David may have intended 
in this Psalm " to represent the expected prince as 
speaking, and using language which would be suitable 
for him, supposing the conceptions entertained by his 
nation respecting his character and office to have been 
correct." (" Lectures," &c, Vol. IV. p. 317.) On that 
interpretation, the words were originally used by the 
writer of the poem in the same application which is 
made of them by Paul : " Thou art my Son, my chosen 
and beloved messenger to men ; I have constituted 
thee to that office." If, however, we prefer the other 
construction, and consider David as referring to him- 
self, and representing Jehovah as saying to him, " Thou 
[David] art my son," &c. (ibid.), we shall then under- 
stand Paul as quoting words originally used in refer- 
ence to David, and applying them to Jesus agreeably 
to the same principles and usages of composition which 
have already been treated so much at length. We 
shall understand him as saying, " The words of the 
first Psalm (" Thou art my Son," &c), originally 
used respecting the elevation of David to the regal 



XIII. 34-37.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 213 

dignity, may be fitly applied to that institution of 
Jesus in the office of Messiah, which took place when 
God fulfilled in his person " the promise which was 
made unto the fathers." 

XIII. 34-37. 

And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now 
no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise : " I will 
give you the sure mercies of David." Wherefore he saith 
also in another Psalm, " Thou shalt not suffer thine Holy- 
One to see corruption." For David, after he had served his 
own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was 
laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption : but he whom God 
raised again saw no corruption. 

By " the sure mercies of David," I understand the 
pseudo-Isaiah (lv. 3 ; comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. III. 
p. 260), from whom Paul appears to have borrowed 
the phrase, to have meant the crowning mercies con- 
nected with the establishment of the Messiah's king- 
dom ; these the prophet calls " the sure mercies of 
David " (comp. Ps. lxxxix. 1 - 4), either because David 
had so often expressed his expectation of them, or be- 
cause the Messiah, according to this writer's concep- 
tion of him, was to be David's son. " The sure mer- 
cies of David," says Paul, God at last, after so many 
ages of hope deferred, has " given to you" ; — that event, 
of the establishment of the Messiah's reign, to which 
(with however imperfect knowledge) the prophet re- 
ferred when he used those words, was brought to pass 
when God " raised him up from the dead, now no 
more to return to corruption," agreeably to the lan- 
guage used in another Old Testament passage. (Acts 
xiii. 34, 35 ; comp. Ps. xvi. 10.) David, in that pas- 
sage, speaks in the first person : " Thou wilt not give 
me up to the grave," &c. But, argues Paul, it is im- 
possible to apply the words, in a strictly literal sense, 



214 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIII. 34-37. 

to that prince, for we know that he, " having served 
the will of God in his own generation [or, in his own 
individual life], fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fa- 
thers, and saw corruption " ; but the words are appli- 
cable to that Messiah whom I and my associates an- 
nounce. David did not expect to be immortal in his 
own person ; he expected to revive in the Messiah, his 
descendant ; and behold, the Messiah is now come. 

This exposition of Paul accords entirely with the 
view which I have taken of the Psalm in question. 
("Lectures," &c., Vol. IV. pp. 318-320.) I have 
maintained, not simply that the words of that Psalm 
are applicable, in the way of accommodation, to the 
Messiah, but that the author had the Messiah in mind 
when he wrote them, and used them in reference to 
him ; and this not with any supernatural knowledge of 
the Messiah, but as any Jew of his time might have 
done. My only doubt is in respect to a minor point, 
which is somewhat subtle, but which at all events does 
not affect the main scheme of the interpretation. 
When Paul says, " he raised him up from the dead," 
and " he whom God raised again saw no corruption," 
the obvious construction is thought to be that which 
makes he and him represent Jesus. I shall not con- 
trovert this. It accords very well with my conception 
of the Psalm, and of Paul's purpose in quoting from 
it. Paul might well say that David's expectation of 
his own continued life in his race would not be real- 
ized in the Messiah unless the Messiah were immortal, 
which Jesus would be, now that God had " raised him 
up from the dead, now no more to return to corrup- 
tion." But perhaps it would be following out more 
consistently the idea which I understand to pervade 
the Psalm, and at the same time be doing no violence 
to Paul's language, to regard him as applying the 






XIII. 46, 47.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 215 

words directly to David, and not to Jesus. Jesus was 
the Messiah. David had in view the sending of the 
Messiah (his own revival in his offspring) when he 
said of himself " thou wilt not leave me in the grave, 
nor suffer thine holy one to see corruption" ; and Paul 
may have meant to pursue precisely that idea when 
he said, that though David, regarded merely as one 
who in his own time had served God's will, had wholly 
passed away and seen corruption, yet that David, re- 
garded as the Messiah's predecessor, had seen no cor- 
ruption, David being revived in that personage. 

XIII. 40, 41. 

Beware, therefore, lest that come upon you which is spoken of 
in the prophets : " Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and 
perish : for I work a work in your days, a work which ye 
shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you." 

This text requires no explanation. Paul merely 
uses language of Habakkuk (i. 5) to enforce a remon- 
strance which the words well and earnestly conveyed, 

XIII. 46, 47. 

Lo, we turn to the Gentiles : for so hath the Lord commanded 
us, saying, " I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, 
that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the 
earth." 

I think that the " light to the Gentiles," intended 
by the pseudo-Isaiah (xlix. 6 ; comp. " Lectures," &c, 
Vol. III. p. 248) in the words here quoted by Paul, is 
the people of Israel (comp. Is. xlix. 3, 5). " So hath 
the Lord commanded us" says the Apostle, " saying, 
\ I have set thee to be a light of tne Gentiles,' " &c. 
If by " us " we understand Paul and his fellow-preach- 
ers, we shall then regard him as saying : The Lord 
hath given us a commission which may be fitly ex- 



216 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XV. 13-17. 

pressed in these words of an ancient prophet. If we 
take " us " to mean, in Paul's quotation, what it did 
in the prophet's original words, then we shall interpret 
Paul thus : It was long ago said that the Jewish peo- 
ple was to be a " light of the Gentiles," and " for sal- 
vation unto the ends of the earth." We, apostles of 
Jesus, are about to make it so, when " we turn to the 
Gentiles," and publish to them a doctrine which had 
its birth in the bosom of the Jewish race. 

Other commentators, with not so much reason, as it 
seems to me, consider the " light to the Gentiles " 
spoken of to be the prophet himself; and others yet, 
with still less probability, to be the expected Messiah. 
If the former of these constructions is correct, then 
Paul says, in the words quoted : The Lord has given 
to me and Barnabas a like trust to what he was an- 
ciently represented as having given to his prophet. If 
the latter, then he addresses the Jewish cavillers as 
follows : My companion and myself " turn to the 
Gentiles " with our proclamation of Jesus, the Mes- 
siah, agreeably to that ancient conception of the Mes- 
siah, whereby he was represented as no monopoly of 
the race of Abraham, but " a light of the Gentiles," 
and " for salvation unto the ends of the earth." 

XV. 13-17. 

James answered, saying, " Simeon hath declared how 

God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a 
people for his name. And to this agree the words of the 
prophets; as it is written, 4 After this I will return, and will 
build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down ; 
and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up. 
That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all 
the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, 
who doeth these things.' " 

James's quotation is from the prophecy of Amos 



XV. 13-17.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 217 

(ix. 11, 12). In our common version James is repre- 
sented as proceeding thus (18): "Known unto God 
are all his works from the beginning of the world." 
But this clause is spurious. (See Griesbach, "Nov. 
Test.," ad loc.) The true reading is : "All the Gentiles, 
upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doth 
these things, known from the beginning." The words 
" known from the beginning " do not occur at the end 
of the passage quoted by James from Amos (ix. 12); 
but perhaps (for the quotation is in no part accurately 
made) they correspond to the words of Amos in the 
previous verse (ix. 11), " as in the days of old," which 
words James (Acts xv. 16) omits from their proper 
place in the passage quoted. In the way in which he 
arranged them, he perhaps intended them to contain 
his comment on that adoption of the Gentiles which 
was now taking place, his words being equivalent to 
these : " Saith the Lord, who is making these things 
to be such as they were anciently recognized." 

Amos, when he wrote these words, was referring to 
the Messiah's reign (" Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 404, 
405), which, like all other Jews, he expected, though 
with an imperfect apprehension of its nature. And 
James merely states, that when Peter " declared how 
God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of 
them a people for his name " (Acts xv. 14), he declared 
no hitherto unheard of principle of Divine administra- 
tion ; that, on the contrary, however unpalatable to 
his Jewish contemporaries, the ancient writers of the 
nation had recognized it in some sense, and that, at all 
events, it harmonized with their language. " To this 
agree the words of the prophets," he says ; and, to es- 
tablish this point, he quotes a passage from Amos, un- 
questionably referring to the Messiah's reign, and not 
restricting its benefits to Jews, but (in the form in 
19 



218 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XV. 20 (29). 

which James recites them) distinctly naming, as one 
of the concomitant circumstances, " that the residue 
of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles 
upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord." 

It must not be overlooked, that these last important 
words, on which rests the argument of the Apostle 
James, are not correctly quoted from Amos, who (in 
the Hebrew text) says in the place of them, " that 
they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the 
heathen which are called by my name, saith the Lord." 
Perhaps the Hebrew words of Amos, where he speaks of 
the heathen called by the Lord's name, are quite as much 
to James's purpose as those which he has substituted 
for them. But I think it altogether unquestionable, 
that, had he regarded them as containing supernatural 
prediction, it is not in this careless and inexact way 
that he would have appealed to them. James's quota- 
tion follows the Septuagint version much more nearly 
than the Hebrew. But his quotation, as reported by 
Luke, by no means represents that version exactly ; 
for instance, the Septuagint translators have nothing 
corresponding to the important words, "the Lord," 
after "seek." 

XV. 20 (29). 

That they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, 
and from things strangled, and from blood. 

See Exod. xxxiv. 15, 16 ; Lev. vii. 26, xvii. 10-14. 
XVII. 2, 3. 

Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath- 
days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures ; opening and 
alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again 
from the dead ; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, 
is Christ. 



XVII. 2,3.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 219 

Could Paul have shown by the testimony of the Old 
Testament Scriptures, " that Christ must needs have 
suffered '* % I think not. I can find no such testi- 
mony. Could he have shown that the Christ " must 
needs have risen again from the dead " 1 Cer- 
tainly not. The Old Testament says nothing of the 
kind. 

What, then, was the nature of Paul's argument and 
exposition % 

He had to deal with Jews prepossessed with the 
same erroneous views of the Old Testament writings 
as those which prevail among Christians at the present 
day. The assembly which he addressed in the syna- 
gogue of Thessalonica imagined, like the great ma- 
jority of Christians now, that those Old Testament 
writers called the Psalmists and the Prophets were 
supernaturally inspired, and of course infallible teach- 
ers of religious truth ; and when they found those 
writers describing the future Messiah as a splendid 
monarch and victorious soldier, they were satisfied that 
such alone was the Messiah they were to look for. 
But the poor Galilean peasant, Jesus, was no magnifi- 
cent prince, and no triumphant warrior. They turned 
a deaf ear to Paul, therefore, when he said, " This 
Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ." 

Paul's task then was to show that it was Jit (eBec) 
that Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead 
(rendered in our version, " that Christ must needs have 
suffered," Sec). It would not have been fit, if divine 
inspiration had in ancient times declared that the Mes- 
siah's course was to be one of brilliant earthly success 
and glory, as the Jews with whom Paul was reasoning, 
in consequence of their erroneous estimate of the au- 
thority of the Psalmists and Prophets, believed. It 
was necessary for him to show them their error in this 



220 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVII. 11. 

respect. Before they could recognize the Messiah in 
an obscure sufferer, like Jesus of Nazareth, it was 
necessary for them to be satisfied that the writers, from 
whom they had derived conceptions of the Messiah so 
inconsistent with that supposition, were not authorita- 
tive guides. This, I have no doubt, was the view 
which Paul was " opening," when " three Sabbath- 
days he reasoned with them out of the Scriptures." 
" This Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is the Christ," 
Paul said, notwithstanding he has suffered, and been 
put to a malefactor's death. " It is fit," — there is 
nothing unsuitable or incredible in the fact, — that 
he should " have suffered, and risen again from the 
dead " to fulfil his office. If you should rely on the 
Psalmists and Prophets as infallible oracles on the 
subject, you would, it is true, conclude that it was not 
fit. For such is not their representation. But their 
representation, so far as as it differs from, or adds to, 
the original Mosaic revelation on which it is founded 
(Deut. xviii. 15), is of no authority to determine your 
belief. What is " fit " in itself is not less so by reason 
of any thing that they have said, for they are not au- 
thoritative guides upon that question. And he " rea- 
soned out of the Scriptures, opening" and expound- 
ing them in maintenance of this view. 

XVII. 11. 

They received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched 
the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so. 

The investigation which occupied the Bereans, I 
understand to have been the same in which I have 
endeavored to aid the readers of these comments, and of 
my work on the Old Testament ; namely, to ascertain 
the authority and sense of different parts of the Jew- 
ish Scriptures, and their bearing on the mission and 



XXIV. 14, 15.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 221 

office of Jesus, and on the Christian revelation in 
general. 

XVIII. 18. 
Having shorn his head in Cenchrea ; for he had a vow. 

See Numb. vi. 1 - 21 ; and comp. Acts xxi. 23, 24, 
26 ; " Lectures," &c, Vol. I. pp. 330 - 332. 

XVIII. 28. 

He mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, showing by 
the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ. 

The argument used by Apollos I understand to have 
been of the same tenor as that which I have above 
(pp. 218-220) ascribed to Paul. 

XXI. 25. 

As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and 
concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that 
they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from 
blood, and from strangled, and from fornication. 



See above, p. 218. 



XXIII. 5. 



It is written, " Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy 
people." 

Comp. Exod. xxii. 28. 

XXIV. 14, 15. 

This I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call 
heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all 
things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets ; and 
have hope towards God, which they themselves also allow, 
that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the 
just and unjust. 

Paul said that he not only agreed with the Phari- 
19* 



222 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XXVI. 22, 23. 

sees in receiving the doctrine of the resurrection, 
which the Sadducees rejected (Acts xxiii. 8), but that 
he also believed in the Prophets as well as the Law ; 
— though he believed in Law and Prophets not ac- 
cording to the current Jewish opinions of their au- 
thority and sense, but according to a construction of 
his own and of his fellow-Christians ; " after the way 
which " the Jews called " heresy." 

XXVI. 22, 23. 

I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, 
saying none other things than those which the Prophets and 
Moses did say should come ; that Christ should suffer, and 
that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and 
should show light unto the people, and to the Gentiles. 

Moses had said (Deut. xviii. 15) that a prophet, 
called in later times the Christ, should " show light 
unto the people" and the Prophets (in unison with the 
promises to the patriarchs, Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18, xxii. 
18, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14) had added (Is. ix. 2, lx. 1 - 3, et 
al. h. m.), that he should enlighten " the Gentiles." 
But (independently of the question whether either of 
them had in any way left it on record " that Christ 
should suffer ") certain it is that no such declaration 
as that he " should rise from the dead, and show light 
unto the people," &c, is to be found in their writings. 

It is merely by a mistranslation of his words, that 
Paul is made responsible for that erroneous assertion. 
The particle (el, if) represented here by " that " (" that 
Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first," 
&c.), will, it is true, in a peculiar Attic construction, 
bear that rendering, though the occasions for it are in- 
frequent. Buttman says (" Grammar," § 149), "When 
el follows Oav/uba^co [J ivonder~], and some other verbs 
expressing emotions of the mind, it ought strictly to 



XXVI. 22, 23.] ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 223 

signify if, when, and to be used merely of things which 
are uncertain ; e. g. c if or ivhen thou dost not per- 
ceive this, I wonder at it.' The Attic custom, how- 
ever, of avoiding a tone of decision in discourse, has 
been the occasion that el is used of things not only 
highly probable, but even entirely certain ; and conse- 
quently stands for ore [that]" Sec. There are a few 
New Testament examples of this use. (Comp. Mark xv. 
44 ; Acts xxvi. 8 ; 2 Cor. xi. 15 ; 1 John iii. 13.) But 
* testifying " (fiapTvpov/xevos), the word prefixed in the 
present instance, is a word apparently as far as possi- 
ble out of the range of those verbs expressive of 
"emotion" which admit this peculiar translation of 
the particle after them. 

But the correct interpretation of the passage does 
not mainly turn on the rendering of this conjunction. 
Indeed, understand the words " when I say " before 
" that," and the true sense will be sufficiently ex- 
pressed. Another word in the sentence requires more 
particular remark. It is that rendered " other than " 
(e/e-ro?). It is often equivalent, as our translators here 
understood it to be, to except, beside, additional to. But 
such is not precisely its primitive meaning. Derived 
from the preposition (e/e) which means " from," it sig- 
nifies literally out of, without, outside. (Comp. Matt, 
xxiii. 26 ; 1 Cor. vi. 18 ; 2 Cor. xii. 2, 3.) That which 
is without is strange, foreign, alien. (1 Cor. v. 12, 13 ; 
Col. iv. 5 ; 1 Tim. iii. 7.) Sophocles (" Antigone," v. 
330) has this sense of the word (e/ero? eXirlSo^, for 
contrary to expectation). So I understand Paul to use 
it. My doctrine, he says, concerning the Christ as a 
universal enlightener is not foreign, alien, contrary, to 
the doctrine of our ancient Scriptures. 

So that, in short, I understand his declaration to be 
to this effect : "When I proclaim a Christ, the enlight- 



224 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE ACTS, &o. [XXVIII. 23. 

ener of Jews and Gentiles, I testify nothing foreign, 
nothing opposed, to what " the Prophets and Moses 
did say should come," even if [or, when I declare that] 
the Christ whom I preach is a sufferer, and was first 
to rise from the dead, and then " to show light," &c. 

Agrippa, and the Jews about his tribunal, had no 
notion of a suffering, dying, and risen Messiah. Paul 
declares that the idea of the Messiah which they en- 
tertained, so far as it was of one who, as Moses and 
the Prophets had declared, should " show light unto 
the people and to the Gentiles," was his own also, and 
that he in no way contradicted it, nor declared any thing 
inconsistent with it, when he further averred that it 
was God's will that the Messiah should first suffer, 
die, and rise, as Jesus had done. 

XXVIII. 23. 

There came many to him into his lodging ; to whom he ex- 
pounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them 
concerning Jesus, both out of the Law of Moses, and out of 
the Prophets, from morning till evening. 

See above, pp. 161 - 164, 208, 209. 

XXVIII. 25 - 27. 

When they agreed not among themselves they departed, after 
that Paul had spoken one word, " Well spake the Holy Ghost 
by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, saying, l Go unto this 
people and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not un- 
derstand ; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive : for the 
heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of 
hearing, and their eyes have they closed ; lest they should 
see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand 
with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal 
them.' " 

See above, pp. 80, 81. 



PART II. 
APOSTOLICAL EPISTLES. 

SECTION I. 

EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE KOMANS. 

I. 6, 7. 

The called of Jesus Christ ; beloved of God, called to 

be saints. 

The Epistles of Paul, especially the controversial 
parts, abound in the use of a vocabulary drawn from 
the Old Testament, and requiring a reference to its 
original use in that collection of writings, in order to 
a correct interpretation of it where it occurs in the 
Christian Scriptures. Himself a Jew, like the rest of 
the Apostles, St. Paul of course employed words 
agreeably to Jewish usage. Especially when he dis- 
cussed questions raised by Jews out of the technical 
phraseology of their sacred writings, it was unavoidable 
that he should use that phraseology in its accepted 
technical sense. 

The family of Abraham occupied a peculiar position, 
from the time when they were selected by Divine wis- 
dom to be recipients of revelations of religious truth. 
That position was expressed in the Old Testament by 
various titles and epithets. 

They were entitled in very numerous passages, " the 
Congregation of the Lord " (e. g. Numb. xvi. 3, xxvii. 
17, xxxi. 16 ; Deut. xxiii. 3 ; Josh. xxii. 17 ; 1 Chron. 
xxviii. 8 ; Mic. ii. 5) ; a word equivalent to Church 

As God had invited them to the possession of a true 



226 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 6, 7. 

theology, and the enjoyment of corresponding privi- 
leges, they were said to be his called. " Hearken unto 
me, O Jacob, and Israel, my called." (Is. xlviii. 12 ; 
comp. xli. 9, li. 2 ; Hos. xi. 1.) 

The Israelites collectively, by reason of this relation, 
were God's chosen, or what is the same thing, his elect. 
" Ye seed of Israel, his servant ; ye children of Jacob, 
his chosen ones." (1 Chron. xvi. 13.) " For Jacob my 
servant's sake, and Israel mine elect." (Is. xlv. 4 ; comp. 
Dent. iv. 37, vii. 6, x. 15 ; 1 Kings iii. 8 ; Ps. xxxiii. 
12, cv. 6, 43, cvi. 5, cxxxv. 4 ; Is. xli. 8, 9, xliii. 20, 
xliv. 1, 2; Ezek. xx. 5.) 

They were his saved, or delivered (Deut. xxxiii. 29) ; 
his purchased (Exod. xv. 16); his redeemed (2 Sam. 
vii. 23) ; his ransomed (Is. xxxv. 10, li. 10). 

They were his children (Deut. xiv. 1) ; his sons (Is. 
xliii. 6) ; his people (Exod. v. 1); his inheritance (Deut. 
ix. 26) ; his servants (Lev. xxv. 55) ; his beloved (Jer. 
xii. 7) ; his holy ones, or saints (Deut. vii. 6 ; Ps. cxlviii. 
14; 1 Mac. i. 46). 

These expressions, and others of similar tenor, it is 
to be carefully remembered, have no reference what- 
ever to the particular character or position of indi- 
viduals. They relate to the people of Israel collec- 
tively, comprising, as it did, characters of every degree 
of goodness and wickedness, from Moses to Nadab, 
from Elijah to Jezebel. They relate to that people 
collectively as the Church of God ; in other words, as 
that portion of mankind on whom God had bestowed 
the privileges of a revealed religion. All Gentiles, 
indiscriminately, are " strangers," " aliens," " afar off," 
" not a people." All Jews, good or bad, on account of 
the nation's having the oracles of God in its keeping, 
are comprehended in the class of the " called," the 
" elect," the " purchased, " the household," and so on. 



I. 6, 7.J EPISTLE TO THE KOMANS. 227 

This is plainly the case in respect to those titles which 
to our minds suggest most naturally something of a 
moral significance. To the whole congregation of the 
descendants of Jacob it is said, " Thou art an holy 
people" (Deut. vii. 6, xxvi. 19, xxviii. 9). "He ex- 
alteth," says the Psalmist (cxlviii. 14), " the praise of 
all his saints " ; an honorable title ; and to whom 
applied % He explains : " the praise of all his saints, 
even of the children of Israel." Even the phrase chil- 
dren of God, in this connection, implies no favorable 
testimony in respect to character ; for he is himself 
represented as saying (Is. i. 2), "I have nourished and 
brought up children, and they have rebelled against 
me." 

Herein we have a key to the sense of a large por- 
tion of the Apostolical Epistles of the New Testament. 
Certain expressions were in common use with the Jew- 
ish writers before our Saviour's time, and consequently 
in the common colloquial use of the Jews in his time, 
when they spoke of the subjects to which the ancient 
writers had applied those expressions. Those expres- 
sions had been applied to the Jewish nation as a body, 
— not to single persons, nor with any reference to 
moral desert. They had denoted no more nor less 
than the state of religious privilege which the Jewish 
nation, as such, enjoyed, in being the possessors of a 
revelation with its attendant distinctions and advan- 
tages ; — in short, as being the covenant people, the 
visible Church of God. We know from the Acts of 
the Apostles (x. 1 -xi. 18, xv. 1 - 31), that, at an early 
period of the preaching of Christianity, the question 
began to be moved, whether the descendants of Abra- 
ham were still to continue what they had been, — the 
only covenant people, the exclusive visible Church, of 
God, — or whether Gentiles were now to be permitted 



228 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 17. 

to share their privileges. It was natural — not to say 
unavoidable — that the question should be discussed 
by Jews in the use of those terms by which Jews had 
been accustomed to designate their superiority ; — un- 
avoidable, because this was their vocabulary conse- 
crated to that use, and they had no other. In short, 
the great dispute of the infant Church, whether the 
benefits of the Jewish Messiah's mission were designed 
for Jews only, or for Gentiles also, was, according to 
the phraseology of the time, a dispute whether Jews 
were still to possess exclusively, or henceforward to 
share with Gentiles, a right to the titles of a called, 
elect, saved, redeemed people, and such like. 

It is in reference to that controversy, which he treats 
at large in his Epistle to the Romans, that Paul, taking, 
as he always did, the liberal side, addresses himself, in 
the beginning of that Epistle, to the whole Church of 
Rome alike, composed of both Jewish and Pagan con- 
verts, as " the called of Jesus Christ," and the " beloved 
of God." As he viewed the case, all who gave " obe- 
dience to the faith among all nations " (i. 5) were " the 
called of Jesus Christ " (6), as much as the Jews had 
been the called of Moses. As much as the Jewish 
nation had formerly been, so much all, Jews or Gen- 
tiles, who were now willing to accept the Gospel of 
Jesus as the message of God, were " beloved of God, 
called to be saints " (7). 

I. 17. 

Therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith ; 
as it is written, " The just by faith shall live." 

In the latter clause of this verse (in which, after 
Griesbach, I adopt the verbal arrangement necessary 
to bring out the Apostle's meaning), language used by 
an ancient writer (Hab. ii. 4) in a different sense and 



I. 17.] EPISTLE TO THE EOMANS. 229 

application (comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. III. p. 289) 
is employed by way of accommodation to St. Paul's 
doctrine, which it well expresses. The sense of the for- 
mer clause, I think, is correctly represented in this 
paraphrase : " In the Gospel of Christ God's method 
of justification is revealed as resting upon faith from 
first to last." Or it may be rendered : " Therein, for 
the foundation of faith, God's method of justification 
by faith is revealed." 

The subject of justification by faith, so much dis- 
cussed in the Epistles of Paul, particularly in those 
to the Romans and Galatians, is here introduced. 
The doctrine is more fully and exactly set forth in 
passages a little further on, where it is said, " A man 
is justified by faith without the deeds of the law" 
(iii. 28 ; comp. 20, 22, iv. 2) ; and again (iv. 5 ; comp. 
Gal. ii. 16), " To him that worketh not, but believeth 
on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted 
for righteousness [rather, for justification^' 

What is the meaning of these propositions % It de- 
pends on the signification of the terms, "justification," 
"faith," and "works" or "deeds of the law." 

The strictly orthodox sense (so called) of the doctrine, 
I may exemplify in the definitions of the Westminster 
Catechism and Confession, according to which, — 

" Justification is an act of God's free grace unto 
sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sin, accepteth 
and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight, 
not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, 
but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction 
of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by 
faith alone." (" Larger Catechism," Quest. 70.) 

" Justifying faith is a saving grace, wrought in 
the heart of a sinner by the spirit and word of God, 
whereby he, being convinced of his sin and misery, 
20 



230 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 17. 

and of the disability of himself and all other creatures 
to recover him out of his lost condition, not only 
assenteth to the truth of the promise of the Gospel, 
but receiveth and resteth upon Christ and his right- 
eousness therein held forth, for pardon of sin, and for 
the accepting and accounting of his person righteous 
in the sight of God for salvation." (Ibid. Quest. 72.) 

" Good works are only such as God hath commanded 
in his holy word, and not such as, without the warrant 
thereof, are devised by men, out of blind zeal, or upon 
any pretence of good intention. These good works, 
done in obedience to God's commandments, are the 
fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith, and by 
them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen 
their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profes- 
sion of the Gospel, stop the mouths of adversaries, 
and glorify God." (" Confession," &c., chap. xvi. §§ 1, 
2.) In short, good works are acts of Christian obedi- 
ence, from Christian principles and motives. 

That which may perhaps be regarded as the prevail- 
ing scheme among liberal commentators of the present 
day represents justification as meaning " absolution 
from sin, and assurance of the heavenly happiness " ; 
faith, " the whole temper and character of a Christian " ; 
and works, or deeds of the law, " observance of the 
Jewish ritual." (Comp. " Test. Nov. Hammond, et 
Cler." ad Horn. iii. 4 ; Locke, " Paraphrase and Notes," 
&c. on Rom. iv. 25.) And on this basis the proposi- 
tion will signify : " A man obtains assurance of final 
salvation, not in consequence of observing the cere- 
monies of the Jewish Law, but of having become pos- 
sessed of the Christian spirit and character." 

Objections to this exposition are, — 

1. That it ascribes an unauthorized sense to the 
word faith ; a sense not justified by its etymology, 



I. 17.] EPISTLE TO THE KOMANS. 231 

nor (as I think) by the practice of the sacred writers, 
Jewish or Christian, but merely devised to meet a sup- 
posed exigency. " Faith in Jesus Christ " means belief 
that Jesus is the Christ. It is that act of the mind by 
which the mind recognizes Jesus in the character of 
the Messiah. I know what " dispositions of the heart " 
means, but the " faith of the heart," of which I some- 
times hear from the pulpit, has no more meaning for 
me than the passions, affections, or appetites of the 
understanding. It is true that we read, " With the 
heart man believed unto righteousness." (Rom. x. 10.) 
But it is a Jew who uses the language ; and in the 
usage of his nation the heart (2y) means not more the 
seat of the affections, than the mind or understanding. 
(Comp. Judg. xvi. 17; 1 Kings x. 2, 24 ; 1 Chron. 
xxix. 18 ; Job ix. 4, xii. 3, xxxiv. 10, xxxvi. 5 ; Pro v. 
vii. 7, ix. 4 ; Is. vi. 10, x. 7.) 

2. That it unjustifiably limits the sense of the word 
works, in making it refer to the Jewish Law, instead 
of standing for universal religious obedience. (Comp. 
Rom. iv. 5, ix. 11 ; Tit. iii. 3-5.) 

3. That it represents justification as a thing future 
to Christians, whereas the Apostle speaks of it as a 
thing passed. (Comp. Rom. v. 1, 9 ; 1 Cor. vi. 11 ; Tit. 
iii. 7.) Nor can it be shown that the words justifica- 
tion wad justify, or their equivalents in Greek, ever, in 
the New Testament, denote admittance to, or assurance 
of, final salvation. I do not deny that they are used 
in connections where final salvation is the subject 
(as, perhaps, in Rom. ii. 13), but that they ever them- 
selves express that sense. The distinction between 
sense and signification is a familiar one. 

4. That it represents Paul as defending an insignifi- 
cant proposition ; for whoever should regard the works 
of the Jewish Law as obligatory, would be prompted 



232 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 17. 

to perform them by that very principle of obedience 
assumed to be denoted by the word faith. In such a 
case the works and the faith which Paul places in 
such precise opposition would coincide. 

I take faith and works in their common acceptation, 
understanding, by the one, belief and by the other, 
obedience in general ; and justification I interpret as 
importing admission to the present privileges of the 
Christian community ; in other words, admission into 
the visible Church, the society of Christians, the com- 
pany of the covenant people of God. On this basis, 
the proposition will read as follows : — A man is in- 
troduced into the Christian community simply on the 
condition of recognizing the authority of Jesus, its 
head, and not on any condition of previous obedience 
rendered by him, of whatever kind. 

The doctrine here expressed, more largely stated, 
will be this : — Christianity freely offers its enlighten- 
ing and sanctifying influences to whosoever will avail 
himself of them. He who believes that it is from God, 
is in a condition to avail himself of them, which no 
person who does not believe can be, from the nature 
of the case. All who are ready to be benefited by it, 
then, it adopts. No such person does it reject, on ac- 
count of previous disobedience, greater or less. Every 
believer in its divine original it receives, so far as to 
regard him as a member of the visible Church, free to 
enjoy and use all the privileges it holds out, which 
privileges he then remains at liberty to use or misuse 
at his option and his peril ; and according to his use 
or abuse of them will be his final lot. 

According to this view, St. Paul meets the plea of 
the Jewish converts — viz. that in order to be a member 
of the Christian community, which, in their apprehen- 
sion, was but an improved continuation of the Jewish, 



I. 17.] EPISTLE TO THE EOMANS. 233 

it was necessary first to comply with the Jewish ritual 
— by declaring that, so far from any particular form 
of works (" deeds of the law ") being requisite for 
initiation, no performance of works whatever, no past 
obedience, was the ground of admission to the name and 
opportunities of discipleship. (Comp. Acts viii. 36, 37.) 

This rendering of the proposition in question, be- 
sides being in striking accordance with the liberal 
spirit of Christianity, has the advantage of harmoniz- 
ing with our knowledge of the state of the controversy 
in the Apostolic age throughout, and with the uniform 
tenor of St. Paul's reasonings, illustrations, and phrase- 
ology, when, in different places, he presents the argu- 
ment. Whatever difficulty belongs to it consists in 
finding authority for explaining the words justify and 
justification in the manner proposed. For the other two 
words are taken in their plainest and commonest sense. 

Accordingly, I inquire what is the sense of the words 
justify and justification in the technical use of Scrip- 
ture. And the inquiry brings me to this conclusion ; 
that they belong to that class of terms, lately com- 
mented on (see pp. 225 - 228), which relate to recep- 
tion into the visible Christian Church. A man is justi- 
fied when he becomes a member of the company of 
believers ; and his justification is his transfer into that 
new position. 

Words are arbitrary signs. Usage fixes their sense, 
and the satisfactory way to ascertain their sense is to 
observe their use. But I will premise an etymological 
view of the words in question, which possibly may de- 
serve some attention, as accounting for their use. 

The Greek words (Slkcuoco and hucaioavvr)) rendered 
in our version of the New Testament justify and right- 
eousness , occur frequently in the Septuagint translation 
of the Old Testament, from which the Evangelists and 
20* 



234 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 17. 

Apostles have borrowed much of their phraseology. 
In the Septuagint they correspond respectively to a 
Hebrew verb and Hebrew nouns, all from one root 
(pHVC?, P*TV> an( ^ ^pIV)- Accordingly, by ascertain- 
ing the meaning of these Hebrew words, we ascertain 
the sense which the corresponding Greek words had 
in Hellenistic use ; that is, in the use of the Septu- 
agint version and the New Testament. 

Now the Hebrew words are derivatives from a root 
(p"!V)» ^ ne primitive meaning of which appears to be, 
in the infinitive, to be straight, or erect In the Hiphil 
form, the verb will of course mean to cause to be erect or 
to set up, and the noun, an erect posture. But in a sec- 
ondary sense of the word, akin to that by which in 
English we use uprightness and rectitude for a moral 
quality, the radical verb (pIV) ^ s use( ^ m Hebrew for 
he stood morally erect, or he was innocent ; and its Hiphil 
form accordingly denotes to cause or esteem a person 
to be morally erect or innocent, that is, to justify a per- 
son, and the derived noun stands for moral erectness or 
uprightness, as well as for the condition of being physi- 
cally upright. 

But there is clearly no reason for deserting^ the 
primitive meaning of a word in a given case, when the 
secondary will not in that case give us so good a sense. 
Let us keep to the primitive sense in this instance, and 
see whither it will lead us. On the text, " Abraham 
believed God, and it was counted unto him for right- 
eousness " (Gen. xv. 6), St. Paul founds much of the 
argument in his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, 
thus -directing attention to it as the source of his pe- 
culiar phraseology. If, instead of rendering the last 
word (np°lV) righteousness, we give it the^ primitive 
meaning of a setting up, or an establishment, we obtain 
a sense which, besides being more literal, much better 



I. 17.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 235 

suits the context. We shall then understand the Old 
Testament writer as saying, that Abraham's belief was 
counted to him, not for righteousness •, or personal merit 
(which it is not directly to his purpose to speak of), 
but for the ground of his being set up, the ground of 
his establishment, as the head of the covenant people 
of God. The text, thus understood, is precisely to 
the sacred writer's purpose, for he is treating of the 
origin of the privileges possessed by the Jews in that 
character. And, on this construction, it is also emi- 
nently to the Apostle's purpose to quote the text, in 
the connection in which his quotation of it occurs ; 
his object being to show that the ground of the estab- 
lishment of Christians in the character of God's cove- 
nant people was the same ground — namely, that of 
faith — on which had rested Abraham's previous es- 
tablishment in the same relation. 

Now if we ought to adopt this sense for the Hebrew 
word (npny) in the Old Testament passage just com- 
mented on, we must (if we admit the translation into 
Greek to be faithful in this instance) attribute the same 
sense to the corresponding Greek word (Sikcuoo-vvt)) in 
the Septuagint version. And if, in the Septuagint 
version, the Greek noun is used to denote an establish- 
ment in the condition of God's peculiar people, God's 
Church, it further follows that the same sense naturally 
attaches to the word when it occurs in the same con- 
nection in the New Testament. The verb (Bitccuoco), 
the root of the noun in question, will then also mean 
to establish in this relation. And the representation 
of Paul, in such passages, is elucidated by etymological 
analysis. 

I should have less confidence in an argument belong- 
ing to Hebrew philology, and going to attach to a 
word a sense not set down in the lexicons (natural as 



236 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 17. 

the derivation seems to me), but that I think it strongly 
corroborated by a comparison of two other passages 
of the Old Testament. In a Psalm we read, " Then 
stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment, and so the 
plague was stayed ; and that was counted unto him 
for righteousness (HD*1V/) mi t° all generations for 
evermore." (Ps. cvi. 30, 31.) This refers to a transac- 
tion recorded in the history. (Numb. xxv. 11-13.) 
We turn to it, and what do we find 1 An account of 
the establishment of Phinehas and his family in the 
hereditary dignity of the office of high-priest, or, as it 
is there expressed, of his having, " and his seed after 
him," God's " covenant of peace," " even the covenant 
of an everlasting priesthood." Phinehas's act " was 
counted unto him for righteousness unto all genera- 
tions for evermore," — that is, for establishment in a 
permanent transmissible pontificate. The words " unto 
all generations," &c. have no sense, without torture, on 
the interpretation which supposes a personal quali- 
ty of Phinehas to be referred to under the name of 
his "righteousness." As Phinehas's devout zeal was 
counted to him for the establishment of himself and 
his posterity in the sacerdotal office, so Abraham's 
faith was counted to him for establishment and confir- 
mation of himself and his descendants in the privi- 
leges of God's people, adopted for the reception of his 
Law ; and the belief of Christians (so Paul asserts) 
was counted to them in like manner for a like estab- 
lishment in a church state. 

It must be superfluous to say, that I by no means 
propose, as a conclusion from the above remarks, to 
change the long-accustomed nomenclature on this sub- 
ject, by substituting the word establishment, or any 
other, for the technical justification to which we are 
used. All technical words are but jargon as long 



I. 17.] EPISTLE TO THE KOMANS. 237 

as they are new, and it is better to attempt to define 
and fix the sense of an old one, than to supersede it. 
I have but aimed to trace a process of thought by 
which phraseology of an ancient language has come 
to be used in a very peculiar and strictly technical 
sense, — a sense by no means represented by our word 
justification interpreted by its common use. And now, 
though I have ventured to submit this philological in- 
vestigation, I am quite content to throw it all aside, 
and reach the same result by another process. Whether 
or not the word rendered justify sometimes means to es- 
tablish, unquestionably it often means to deliver, set free, 
redeem.. It has been sufficiently shown (p. 226) that 
the words salvation, redemption, and others equivalent, 
denote, in frequent Scriptural use, the transfer from the 
condition of " aliens," " strangers," " not a people," &c. 
(to use the Jewish vocabulary appropriated to the case), 
to the condition of God's " children," " inheritance," 
and " saints " ; — that is, the condition of members of 
God's visible Church, entitled to the use of its means 
of edification. If, then, it further appears that the 
Greek or Hebrew word rendered righteousness or 
justification is used in Scripture as convertible with 
those translated deliverance, redemption, &c. when the 
latter are employed in their most unrestricted sense, of 
rescue from any evil whatever, we may reasonably con- 
clude that it is convertible with them also when used 
in this specific technical application. Now, that those 
Greek and Hebrew words are used as equivalent to 
those which stand for " deliverance," &c. in a general 
sense, — without consideration of the nature of the 
evil delivered from, — no careful reader of Scripture 
can fail to have observed. (See Acts xiii. 39 ; Rom. 
vi. 7 ; comp. Ps. lxxi. 15, iv. 1, xxiv. 5, li. 14, xcviii. 
2; Is. xli. 10, xlv. 8, 24, xlvi. 13, xlviii. 18, li. 5, lvi. 
1, lviii. 8, lxii. 1, 2; Dan. viii. 14.) 



238 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 17. 

There is no more satisfactory way to ascertain the 
sense of words used by Christians, in the Apostolic 
age, in the discussion of questions growing out of 
Jewish opinions, than to observe what sense the words 
had in Jewish writings of the same period, if there 
are any such to which we may have access. The 
apocryphal book of the Wisdom of Solomon lends 
important confirmation to the view which I have taken 
of the phraseology now under investigation. Its au- 
thor appears to have lived not far from the time of St. 
Paul, if he was not St. Paul's contemporary. (" Lec- 
tures," &c., Vol. IV. pp. 351, 352.) The Jewish com- 
munity and church, as such, without regard to the 
moral condition of the whole or a part, he designates 
as " the righteous " (see Wisdom x. 15 - 20), as well as 
" the saints" (xviii. 1, 5). " Of thy people," he says, 
referring to the exodus from Egypt, " was accepted 
the salvation of the righteous, and destruction of the 
enemies" (xviii. 7). The qualification, " the righteous," 
is clearly intended to denote the Jewish people at large, 
without regard to the moral attributes of all or any. 
The point is put beyond doubt by a later verse. " The 
tasting of death touched the righteous also, and there 
was a destruction of the multitude in the wilderness " 
(xviii. 20). Who were those " righteous " whom " the 
tasting of death touched " % We turn to the history 
(Numb, xvi.), and we find that they were the wicked 
men who experienced a severe visitation of the Divine 
displeasure for their share in the conspiracy of Korah 
and his company. 

The opinion that the words on which I am com- 
menting should always be taken to denote a moral 
quality, and never to import a mere external condition 
or change, can no more be maintained on the less safe 
ground of etymological theory, than on the ground of 



I. 17.] EPISTLE TO THE KOMANS. 239 

fact and usage. More plausibly might it be argued 
from etymology, that, between the two simplest senses 
of the verb in question, in the different languages, — 
namely, to make just, on the one hand, and to hold just, 
or to clear, on the other, — the former ought always 
to be preferred. But in fact this would give a render- 
ing which according to use, which settles such things, 
the Hebrew verb will scarcely bear (possibly Isaiah 
liii. 11 may be an instance), and the Greek and Eng- 
lish verb not at all. It so happens, that, between the 
two meanings of made just, and held just, acquitted 
(to which latter meaning the sense of deliverance in 
general is analogous, so that the same word would 
naturally come to be used for both), use, which is the 
sovereign arbiter, has given the one to the verb, and 
the other, prevailingly, to the noun derived from it; 
so that by justify (p^V-D? Sifcatoco) we mean, not to 
make just, but to hold just ; while, on the contrary, by 
righteousness (p^V? ^icaioavvrf) we mean, not the state 
of him who is held just (that is acquittal, deliverance), 
but the state of him who is made just (that is, inno- 
cence, purity, uprightness). Undoubtedly such is the 
classical use of the Greek noun. But it is clear that 
the derivation is at least equally in favor of the other 
sense, which my argument demands, and I have before 
shown that the Scripture use approves that sense. 

The scheme of interpretation which I maintain may 
be thought liable to the objection of requiring two 
quite different senses to be put upon the w T ord justify, 
when occurring in the same argument as conducted by 
two different New Testament writers ; and this was 
the opinion of John Taylor, whose otherwise judicious 
treatise upon this subject was formerly held in great 
consideration. He supposed (" Key to the Apostolic 
Writings," Chaps. XIL, XVII.) that it was necessary to 



240 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 17. 

distinguish between what he called a " first " and a 
" full and final " justification. By the " first justifi- 
cation " he understood that spoken of by St. Paul, 
namely, admission to the present privileges of believ- 
ers ; by the " full and final," an admission to heavenly 
rewards, treated of in the Epistle of James. I cannot 
admit that there is any good ground for this distinc- 
tion. In my opinion, the word is used by both writ- 
ers in the sense in which I have argued that it is used 
by Paul. The writer of the Epistle of James does not 
affirm that obedience (works), and not faith, is the 
ground and condition of that justification of which 
he speaks ; in which case, it is true, we should have 
to understand him either as contradicting Paul, or as 
treating of some other justification. His aim is to 
show how that faith is to be manifested and discerned, 
which, whenever it exists in an individual, is, as Paul 
says, the ground of that individual's justification, or 
admission among Christians, — how that justifying 
faith, if possessed, will be made known and evinced. 
And he says it is to be made known and proved, not 
by professions merely, but by corresponding actions ; 
and that thus it was that the justifying faith of Abra- 
ham and others was in fact made known. (James ii. 14 
-26.) - His theme is : If actions contradict the wordy 
profession of that faith, which, if it existed, would 
alone justify, or entitle its possessor to a Christian 
welcome, then it is to be held not to exist, and the 
ground of justification fails. " Faith without works 
is dead " ; that is, it is no faith at all. None of the 
virtue of faith resides in a pretended faith of that 
description. Faith ? No, it is not faith. It is pre- 
tence. — And this is unquestionable, and is no incon- 
sistency with the doctrine of Paul, supposing both 
writers to have meant the same thing by justification. 



I. 17.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 241 

If I construe the language in James's Epistle correctly, 
the technical use of the word justify in the New Tes- 
tament is uniform. 

Instead of remarking specially on every text, 
which would involve much repetition, I invite the 
reader to try the correctness of the exposition I have 
been defending, by reading in connection the first chap- 
ters of the Epistle to the Romans, with a substitution 
of justification, or method of justification, for righteous- 
ness,* and understanding justify and justification as 
having the reference which I have pointed out, to the 
great deliverance from Gentile darkness to the light of 
revealed truth. He will find, if I mistake not, that 
what may have hitherto perplexed him is a connected 
and cogent affirmative argument on the question, wheth- 
er Gentiles, in consequence of merely believing in the 
Messiah, might be received on an equal footing with 
Israelites into the community endowed by the Divine 
mercy with the privileges of a revealed religion ; — 
the great question this of the Apostolic times, and the 
question to which the most careless reader cannot fail 
to see that a great part of the Apostle's reasoning cer- 
tainly relates, and that, too, the part in which the 
words under consideration constantly occur. St. Paul 
first meets in this Epistle the Jewish claim to be ex- 
clusively the recognized people of God, by affirming 
that Jews and Gentiles are alike guilty before him, so 
that neither can make that claim on any ground of 
merit. This topic is pressed in the first three chapters, 
after which he argues, in the fourth, that Abraham, 
from whom, as by inheritance, his descendants sup- 
posed their privilege to be derived, himself obtained it 

* Righteousness, in ii. 26, is on every account a false translation, and 
does not enter into the argument. Here, as in v. 18, the word is not 6V 
Kaiocrvpr), nor SiKauocri?, but SiKatco/^a. 

21 



242 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 24. 

in the same manner in which Gentile converts had 
sought it now, — that is, by belief. Thus he estab- 
lishes the truth, that the mere faith of Gentiles is 
" counted to them for righteousness," — for justifica- 
tion ; that no other condition of admittance into 
the Christian community is imposed, except a belief 
in Jesus, its head. 

So he asserts against narrow-minded Jews the most 
catholic principles in relation to the name and pre- 
rogatives of discipleship. He teaches that " God is 
no respecter of persons " ; that neither descent from 
Abraham, nor ancient privileges attached to that line- 
age, constitute, under the Christian dispensation, any 
exclusive title to any expressions of his gracious re- 
gard ; that, the use of the Jewish peculiarity having 
ceased, — a use in which, though the Jews supposed 
otherwise, the ultimate benefit of all mankind had 
been as much contemplated as their own, — it was 
thenceforth abolished, and all, of whatever race, were 
admitted to the full advantages of Divine revelation, 
who, by belief in him through whom the revelation 
was made, were rendered capable of appropriating its 
advantages. Faith is the condition, and the sole con- 
dition, of the enjoyment of the privileges offered by 
the Gospel. In the nature of things, those privileges 
cannot be enjoyed by any who do not believe in the 
divine authority of their giver ; and from no one who 
does believe in it, and who thus becomes receptive 
of them, does the Divine mercy permit them to be 
withheld. 

II. 24. 

The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through 
you, as it is written. 

The reference may be to expressions of Isaiah (lii. 
5) and of Ezekiel (xxxvi. 20, 23). 



III. 9-22.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 243 

III. 4. 

Let God be true, but every man a liar ; as it is written, " That 
thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest over- 
come when thou art judged." 

The words are found in one of the Psalms (li. 4). 
They are adopted simply as well expressing the senti- 
ment which Paul was urging on his own part. 

III. 9-22. 

We have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are 
all under sin ; as it is written, " There is none righteous, no, 
not one : there is none that understandeth, there is none that 
seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they 
are together become unprofitable ; there is none that doeth 
good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre ; with 
their tongues they have used deceit ; the poison of asps is 
under their lips ; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. 
Their feet are swift to shed blood ; destruction and misery are 
in their ways ; and the way of peace have they not known : 
there is no fear of God before their eyes." Now we know 
that what things soever the Law saith, it saith to them who 
are under the Law ; that every mouth may be stopped, and 
all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by 
the deeds of the Law there shall no flesh be justified in his 
sight : for by the Law is the knowledge of sin. But now the 
righteousness of God without the Law is manifested, being 
witnessed by the Law and the Prophets ; even the righteous- 
ness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all, and 
upon all them that believe. 

The passages here quoted occur in the Psalms and 
Prophets. (Ps. xiv. 3, liii. 2, 3, v, 9, cxl. 3, x. 7 ; Jer. 
iv. 22 ; Ps. xxxvi. 1 ; Is. lix. 7, 8.) They contain ani- 
madversions, by the writers of those books, on the 
moral delinquency of the men of their own nation 
and times. The phrase "the Law" (19) is used, as 
sometimes elsewhere (see John x. 34, xii. 34), for the 
Old Testament Scriptures in general. Paul's argument 
is, that, on the ground of moral desert, the Jews have 



244 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 24. 

no claim above the Gentiles to the possession of God's 
gift in Christianity. To prove this, he quotes several 
reproving sentences from their ancient writers ; and 
he argues that those animadversions, found in " the 
Law," must be understood as having been applied to 
Jews, because " whatsoever things the Law saith, it 
saith to them that are under the Law." It does not 
speak for those who have it not. It does not contain 
descriptions of those with whom it has no concern, 
and who will not read it. — The last period of the 
passage under our notice, I would paraphrase as fol- 
lows : " Now is manifested [that is, in the Gospel] 
God's method of justification independent of the Law, 
a method approved by the testimony of both Law and 
Prophets ; even that method of justification which 
rests upon mere belief in Jesus Christ, and extends 
its benefits to all who entertain that belief." God's 
justifying on the ground of faith alone was " witnessed 
by the Law " in a text (Gen. xv. 6) on which Paul is 
presently going to argue at length (Rom. iv. 1-25). 
And it was " witnessed by the Prophets," in such re- 
marks of theirs as he had just been quoting, showing, 
as they did, that, on the ground of desert, the Jews 
could set up no claim to an exclusive justification. 

III. 24. 

Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that 
is in Christ Jesus. 

The Greek original (airoXuTpcoa-^), like redemption, 
the English word which here represents it, means, in 
its primitive sense, to rescue by the payment of a price. 
But in the Scriptural use, the idea of a price, or equiv- 
alent, is often lost sight of, and the word denotes rescue, 
deliverance, in general, by whatever means obtained. 
Thus God is said to " redeem with a stretched-out 



III. 25.] EPISTLE TO THE KOMANS. 245 

arm." (Exod. vi. 6 ; comp. Is. 1. 2 ; Deut. vii. 8, ix. 
26 ; 1 Chron. xvii. 21.) " Through the redemption 
that is in Christ Jesus," through the deliverance which 
Jesus wrought, his disciples were brought, by God's 
free goodness, into a justified, a church, a covenant 
state. See above, pp. 225 - 242. 

III. 25. 

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in 
his blood, to declare his righteousness. 

For " a propitiation," I suppose we should read a 
mercy -seat. So the word (IXacrrripiov) is properly ren- 
dered in the only other place where it occurs in the 
New Testament (Heb. ix. 5). It had been used in 
this sense by the Septuagint translators in rendering 
the Hebrew rOSD (Exod.xxv. 17-22; comp. Lev. xvi. 
13, and numerous other texts of that book ; Ezek. 
xliii. 14, 17, 20 ; Amos ix. 1). It was through the 
mercy-seat that God was approached, under the old 
dispensation ; so, in the new, he had now publicly set 
forth (jrpoeOero) Christ, as a mercy-seat, through which 
believers in Christ's death (" through faith in his 
blood") might approach him. It may be observed, 
however, that the words " through faith " are of doubt- 
ful authenticity. Omitting them, and accordingly 
reading the clause, " whom God hath set forth a mer- 
cy-seat in his blood," we shall understand the Apostle 
to represent Jesus as consecrated to that service by his 
own blood, as the mercy-seat of old was by the blood 
of a victim. (See Lev. xvi. 14.) By " righteousness," 
in the last clause, I understand method of justifi- 
cation. 



21* 



246 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 28. 

III. 28. 

We conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds 
of the Law. 

See above, pp. 228 - 242. 

IV. 2, 3. 

If Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, 
but not before God. For what saith the Scripture ? " Abra- 
ham believed God, and it was counted unto him for right- 
eousness." 

The sense of the text may be expressed as follows, 
viz.: — If Abraham had been justified as a reward for 
his works, he might have had something to boast of. 
(Comp. ii. 17, iii. 27.) But no; it was not so, I call 
God to witness («\V ov, 7rpo? rov Oeov). For what does 
the Scripture say % It says, that Abraham believed 
God, and that belief, a state of mind in which there is 
no merit and no cause for self-complacency, was reck- 
oned to him as his ground of justification. (See above, 
pp. 234, 236, 241, 247.) 

IV. 6-8. 

Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto 
whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, 
" Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose 
sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will 
not impute sin." 

The quotation is from a Psalm (xxxii. 1, 2). All 
that the Psalmist meant was to speak of the happiness 
of having one's sins forgiven. But the expression 
" the Lord will not impute sin " was so much to the 
purpose of the argument which the Apostle was hold- 
ing, to the effect that past sins would not exclude from 
that justification which was now offered to the believer 
in Christ, that he quotes them in an accommodation 
to that sentiment. 






V. 1, 2.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 247 

IV. 9, 10. 

We say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. 
How was it then reckoned ? when he was in circumcision, 
or in uncircumcision ? Not in circumcision, but in imcir- 
cumcision. 

The Jews of Paul's time imagined that observance 
of that rite, which was the seal of the ancient cove- 
nant, was a necessary preliminary to a place among 
the justified people of God. Paul tells them that so 
far was this from the truth, that Abraham himself, the 
father of their church and nation, was justified before 
he was circumcised (comp. Gen. xv. 6, xvii. 11, 24), 
— received into a covenant state, when he had only 
believed. 

IV. 17, 18. 

As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations ; 

according to that which was spoken, So shall thy 

seed be. 

In obtaining justification through his belief, says 
the Apostle, Abraham became the precursor, not only 
of the Jews, his natural descendants, but of all, of 
whatever lineage, Jewish or Gentile, who, in this re- 
spect, should walk in his steps ; thus fulfilling, in an 
unexpected sense, those words which had spoken of 
him as the head of a numerous and a various line. 

V. 1,2. 

Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our 
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith 
into this grace wherein we stand. 

"What was that " peace with God," of which the 
Apostle here speaks 1 It was the reconciliation with 
him which took place, when, by their faith in Jesus, the 
converts were transferred from the condition of " stran- 



248 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [V. 12-19. 

gers," « aliens," " afar off," to that of God's " children," 
his " chosen," his " saints," &c. What does the Apos- 
tle mean by " this grace wherein we stand," and to 
which " we have access by faith " 1 Clearly, the privi- 
leges of Christian discipleship. The text strongly 
confirms the view presented above (pp. 225 - 242) of 
the doctrine of justification by faith. 

V. 12-19. 

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death 
by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have 
sinned ; (For until the Law sin was in the world : but sin is 
not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death 
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not 
sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is 
the figure of him that was to come. But not as the offence, so 
also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many- 
be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, 
which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. 
And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift ; for the 
judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of 
many offences unto justification. For if by one man's of- 
fence death reigned by one ; much more they which receive 
abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall 
reign in life by one, Jesus Christ :) therefore, as by the of- 
fence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation ; 
even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon 
all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's dis- 
obedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of 
one shall many be made righteous. 

Every considerate reader sees that, of themselves, 
these words convey no sense. They are a rude trans- 
lation of a passage to which it is quite plain that the 
translators did not themselves attach any clear mean- 
ing. It is a passage which greatly perplexes the in- 
terpreter, as well on account of its very elliptical char- 
acter, as on account of its dealing (like much of the 
rest of the Epistle) with the conceptions and terms of 



V. 12-19.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 249 

a controversy long ago obsolete. The ideas which 
English readers are apt to suppose to be conveyed by 
the words, are ideas attached to those words in the 
technics of modern theological metaphysics. They 
are ideas not expressed in those words, and altogether 
unknown to St. Paul. 

I am not now composing a commentary on the New 
Testament, but only attempting to explain the references 
therein to the Old. The question raised, under this 
category, by the passage before us, is, what the writer 
meant by his reference therein to Adam ; and in par- 
ticular, whether he meant to say or imply that the ac- 
count in Genesis of Adam, and of his eating the for- 
bidden apple, was genuine history, and that that offence 
of his had some influence on the condition of the hu- 
man race, his posterity. 

In order to provide a reply to these questions, I find 
it necessary to set down a paraphrase of the whole 
passage, according to what appears to me, on the 
whole, to be its import. 

Let it be remembered, that the passage occurs in the 
midst of a long argument, drawn from various prem- 
ises, to show that the Jews were no better entitled than 
the Gentiles to justification , that is, to participate in 
the benefits of the Christian revelation. Justification 
through Jesus Christ, Paul maintains, was offered 
alike to every believer in him, of whatever race or 
past profession. The Gentiles could not claim the 
boon on any ground of merit, for they had been griev- 
ous sinners (i. 18 - 32). Nor could the Jews any 
more, for they had added to a like sinfulness the guilt 
of higher privileges abused (ii. 1 - 29) ; a fact which 
their own sages in every age had testified against them 
(iii. 1 - 20). So all, Jew and Gentile alike, must be 
content to receive the Gospel gratuitously, on no other 



250 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [V. 12-19. 

condition than that of believing in it as God's truth 
(iii. 21-31). The Jews ought not to account this any- 
new doctrine, for it was precisely on this ground, that 
their ancestor, Abraham, from whom they derived their 
own claim, had himself received justification (iv. 1-25). 
In their own similar justification, the gracious, un- 
merited gift of God, all Christians ought to rejoice 
and triumph (v. 1-11); and so far from grudging 
to men of heathen race an equality of privilege with 
themselves, and so far from wishing that justification 
should be limited to themselves, or limited in any way, 
the Jews ought to exult and be grateful that justifica- 
tion was henceforward the universal inheritance of 
every human being who would accept it, as much as 
that mortality had been which was introduced into the 
world by the first man. 

"Accordingly," says Paul (v. 12), "as sin was intro- 
duced into the world by one individual, and death was 
introduced into the world by means, or as a conse- 
quence, of sin, just so the reason why death has proved 
the universal lot of man is, that all men have been 
sinners." If, in the case of the man who was the first 
to sin and the first to die, death is to be attributed to 
sin as its cause, the same must hold good as to other 
men. All other men must have sinned, because we 
know that all other men have died. — And thus the 
Apostle reaches, in another way of argument, the con- 
clusion that ail men alike, Jews as much as Gentiles, 
must owe their justification, their enjoyment of Chris- 
tianity, not to any desert, but to God's unconditioned 
goodness. (Comp. iii. 9, 23.) 

(13, 14.) " For it is thus shown that sin was present 
in the world from the time of the first man down to 
the time of the giving of the Law of Moses. You 
will say that a transgression cannot be charged where 



V. 12-19.] EPISTLE TO THE EOMANS. 251 

there is no law to transgress, and you will remind me 
of my own assertion to that effect. (Comp. iv. 15.) But 
it is certain that death held sway in the world from 
the time of Adam to the time of Moses, and this too 
over such as had not transgressed a special express 
command, as Adam did, who, in this matter of the 
connection between sinning and dying, was a repre- 
sentation, a type, of what was to come after ; that is, 
of the human race, his posterity." 

(15.) Having thus argued the disease to be univer- 
sal, the Apostle goes on to urge that it may be expect- 
ed, from God's goodness, that the remedy will be so 
too. " But will not God's favor," he proceeds, " be as 
comprehensive as the exigency which calls for it, viz. 

sin % (Ov% o>9 to TrapaTTTGifjLa, ovtco kcll to yapiayia ;) 
Yes, indeed (yap) ; if, sharing in the sinfulness intro- 
duced by one person (that is, sinning as he had done), 
the many, like that person, have been condemned to 
die, still more assurance may we feel that the goodness 
of God, and his gracious gift brought by another 
person, Jesus Christ, were designed to be extended to 
the many ; to Jews and Gentiles alike ; to the whole 
human race." 

(16.) The Apostle repeats his question and reply. 
" Let me ask again, Will not God's bounty be as com- 
prehensive as was the loss which began with that one 
sinner 1 Yes, indeed ; a condemning judgment (judg- 
ment to condemnation, Kpl/jua eU KaTaKpi/ia) originated 
with one sin (e£ eVo?, with irapaiTTwixaTo^ understood, 
comp. 18) ; but God's gift of justification (to yapio-\xa 
eU hifcaiwua) is so large as to follow upon many sins." 

(17-19.) He repeats and expands them yet further. 
" Yes ; if, originating with the sin of one person, death 
began with that one person its universal reign, much 
more assurance may we feel that receivers of an abun- 



252 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [V. 12-19. 

dantly gracious [a universally offered] gift of justifica- 
tion will reign in the life obtained through that other 
one, Jesus Christ. So then, as, introduced by one sin, 
God's sentence of condemnation to death took effect 
upon all men ; in like manner, introduced by one obe- 
dience, God's purpose of a life-giving justification has 
taken effect for all men. Yes ; as, beginning with the 
disobedience of one man, the many (Jews and Gentiles 
alike) became sinners, falling into like disobedience, so 
too the goodness of God will take care that the many 
(Gentiles and Jews alike) shall share in the justifica- 
tion offered by him who was the first to avoid sin." 

I shall not presume that I have given a correct para- 
phrase of a passage which has tasked the ingenuity of 
Scriptural commentators from Origen to the present day. 
From various causes, among which are its relations 
to forgotten opinions and controversies, and its singu- 
larly elliptical structure, there is not a more intricate 
passage in the New Testament ; and I cannot fitly ex- 
press my astonishment at the confidence of those in- 
terpreters who are sure of understanding it, when they 
draw from it that extraordinary system of theology 
which includes the doctrines of " imputed sin " and 
" imputed righteousness," — doctrines whose statement 
is a mere contradiction in terms. My business, how- 
ever, at present, I repeat, is not that of a commenta- 
tor upon the New Testament, but only upon such por- 
tions of it as put a sense upon language of the Old 
Testament. The argument before us evidently relates 
to the account of the disobedience of Adam in the 
first book of Moses (Gen. iii. 1-19). According to 
my view of that narrative, it is merely a fiction. (See 
"Lectures," &c, Vol. II. pp. 40-43.) The question 
for our present consideration is, whether Paul appears, 
from the passage before us, to have regarded it in a 



V. 12-19.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 253 

different light ; — whether he has argued from it as 
genuine history. 

If Paul, in this passage, affirms any thing bearing 
on the authority and sense of the Old Testament nar- 
rative, it is, that there was one progenitor of the 
human race ; that his name was Adam ; and that 
he died in consequence of sinning. He either affirms 
this, or he affirms nothing on the subject. As I un- 
derstand him, he affirms nothing on the subject. 

I am struck by his language where he speaks of 
Adam (14) as a "type" (two?), a representation, a 
figure, an emblem, a symbol. I know very well that 
a being or thing, possessing an actual, independent 
existence, may be a type, or emblem, of some other 
being or thing. But still I cannot but remark that 
Paul here represents that " Adam " of the narrative in 
Genesis, who transgressed and died, in no other light 
than as a " figure of what was to be afterwards " ; lan- 
guage altogether suitable, had he understood the of- 
fending and sentenced Adam to be merely a creation 
of the ancient philosopher's fancy.* 

But, it will properly be asked, if Paul's argument 
does not imply and mean that the disobedience of 
Adam, as related in Genesis, and his death in conse- 
quence of that disobedience, were historical facts, what 
does it mean % 

I answer, Paul is using, in this instance, the kind of 
argument called by the logicians argumentum ad homi- 
nem, or argumentum ex concessis ; that is, where one 
confutes an opponent by reasonings drawn from prem- 
ises which the opponent, whether correctly or not, ad- 
mits. This kind of argument is perfectly legitimate 

* According to the Son of Sirach (Ecclus. xxv. 24), as much a learned 
Jew as St. Paul, it was not of Adam, the man, but " of the woman came 
the beginning of sin, and through her we all die." 

22 



254 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [V. 12-19. 

and well authorized. It pervades the Socratic dispu- 
tations throughout. It is as suitable to be used in 
Scripture, as elsewhere. And nowhere could it possi- 
bly be used with more appropriateness than in a case 
like the present. When St. Paul was combating an 
error drawn by the Jews from an erroneous interpre- 
tation of their Scriptures, (viz. the error that they 
alone were entitled, under the Christ's reign, to the 
privileges of God's justified people,) what more suita- 
ble than that he should confound them by showing the 
inconsistency of that opinion with another opinion 
derived by them from those same Scriptures, without 
intending to imply, on his own part, the correctness of 
this latter opinion % 

Now the Jews of the age of the Christian revelation 
were miserable interpreters of their ancient records, a 
fact which, to adduce no other proof, our Lord's con- 
versations with them constantly imply and expose. 
They supposed the narratives at the beginning of 
the Book of Genesis to be revealed truth. They sup- 
posed it to be matter of fact that Adam and his wife, 
the first man and woman, were divinely condemned to 
death, and to various hardships on the way thither, in 
consequence of having eaten of fruit which had been 
forbidden to their use. They perhaps supposed, though 
nothing of that kind does the narrative in Genesis de- 
clare, that, in consequence of the delinquency of the 
first pair, death became also the lot of their posterity. 
(Ecclus. xxv. 24.) 

Paul uses this error of theirs to dispossess their 
minds of a different, and, practically, far more hurtful 
error. He reasons with them on their own premises. 
On the ground, he says, of being God's sanctified people 
(Exod. xxxi. 13; Lev. xx. 8, xxi. 8, xxii. 9, 16, 32; 
Ezek. xx. 12, xxxvii. 28), God's holy people (Exod. xix. 6 ; 



IX. 6-17.] EPISTLE TO THE KOMANS. 255 

Deut. vii. 6, xiv. 2, xxvi. 19), God's saints (Deut. xxxiii. 
3 ; 2 Chron. vi. 41 ; Ps. xxxiv. 9, 1. 5, lxix. 2, cxlviii. 14), 
you set up a claim of desert to a monopoly of the 
privileges of Christianity. But you are not saints in 
any such sense as you suppose. You are sinners. 
That you are so, you must needs infer from another 
doctrine which you hold. You are of opinion that 
the death of Adam was, by divine appointment, the 
consequence of his having sinned. Death you regard 
as the punishment and the token of sin. If so, you 
and all other men have sinned, for death, you well 
know, is, and has been, the lot of all men alike. And 
then he goes on to argue from God's goodness, that if, 
in respect to death, and to that sinfulness which the 
Jews understood it to indicate, all men were on a level, 
God would not fail to place all men also on a level in 
respect to those Christian privileges by which the 
means were afforded of escape from sin. 

Here is nothing to authorize the theory of imputed 
sin, &c. So far from it, that the argument, borrowed 
by Paul from his opponents, that a man's subjection to 
the sentence of death proves that man's own personal 
sinfulness, looks in precisely the opposite direction. 

VIII. 36. 

As it is written, " For thy sake we are killed all the day long ; 
we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." 

Every reader sees that this is but an accommodation 
which the Apostle makes to himself and his fellow- 
Christians of language used by the author of a Psalm 
(xliv. 22). 

IX. 6-17. 

They are not all Israel, which are of Israel : neither, because 
they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children : but, In 



256 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IX. 6-17. 

Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are the 
children of the flesh, these are not the children of God : but 
the children of the promise are counted for the seed. For 
this is the word of promise, " At this time will I come, and 
Sarah shall have a son." And not only this, but when Re- 
becca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac ; 
(for the children being not yet born, neither having done 
any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to elec- 
tion might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth ;) it 
was said unto her, " The elder shall serve the younger." As 
it is written, " Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." 
What shall we say, then ? Is there unrighteousness with God ? 
God forbid. For he saith to Moses, " I will have mercy on 
whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom 
I will have compassion." So then it is not of him that willeth, 
nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. 
For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, " Even for this same 
purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power 
in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all 
the earth." 

Abraham had other children than Isaac, but in 
the line of Isaac alone were the promises made to 
Abraham fulfilled. (Gen. xxi. 12.) Isaac was born in 
accomplishment of a promise made to Sarah (Gen. 
xviii. 10, 14); and being so born, it was fit that he 
should be reckoned as the posterity to whom the 
promise applied. Of the two sons of Isaac, it was 
determined, before their birth, that only one, and he 
the younger, should enjoy and transmit the privileges 
designed by God for his chosen family. (Gen. xxv. 23 ; 
Mai. i. 2, 3.) Through Moses (that very Moses who 
gave them those promises from God on which they 
rested their overbearing claims) God had declared his 
unrestricted sovereignty, and his purpose not to limit 
his favors, or give to any claimant a monopoly of the 
prize. (Exod. ix. 16, xxxiii. 19.) Of these facts the 
Apostle avails himself to show to the Jews that God, 
in now adopting Gentiles into his family, was proceed- 






IX. 31-33.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 257 

ing on no other principles than what had been applied 
in the case of the Jews themselves, and recognized in 
their own Scriptures. 

IX. 25-29. 

As he saith also in Osee, " I will call them my people, which 
were not my people ; and her beloved, which was not be- 
loved." And it shall come to pass, that in the place where 
it was said unto them, " Ye are not my people," there shall 
they be called the children of the living God. Esaias also 
crieth concerning Israel, " Though the number of the chil- 
dren of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be 
saved." For he will finish the work and cut it short in right- 
eousness : because a short work will the Lord make upon the 
earth. And as Esaias said before, " Except the Lord of 
Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been 
made like unto Gomorrha." 

That prerogative of God to adopt whom he would 
into his family, and that diminution of the compara- 
tive importance of the chosen people, which were such 
a surprise and scandal to Jews of his day, the Apostle 
says were matters recognized by their own ancient 
writers (Hosea i. 10, ii. 23; Is. x. 22, i. 9); so that 
they could be no cause of offence to such as professed 
to reverence the Scriptures. 

IX. 31-33. 

Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not 
attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore ? Because 
they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the 
law. For they stumbled at that stumbling-stone. As it is 
written, "Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and rock 
of offence : and whosoever believeth on him shall not be 
ashamed." 

The first of these verses I would render (agreeably 
to the criticism on pp. 228 - 242), " Israel, though pro- 
fessedly adhering to the rule of justification, did not ar- 

22* 



258 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [X. 5-8. 

rive at a true apprehension of that rule." After which 
the Apostle goes on to say, that when the Israelites of 
his time had stumbled at the true doctrine concerning 
Christ and the terms of membership of his Church, it 
was a blindness and perversity not different from what 
their ancestors had displayed, according to the testi- 
mony of the holy men who had witnessed their aber- 
rations, and reproved their want of that faith which 
would have given them a happy confidence. (Is. viii. 
14, 15, xxviii. 16 ; in which latter text Paul's quota- 
tion follows the Septuagint version.) 

X. 5-8. 

Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the Law, that 
the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But 
the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise : 
" Say not in thine heart, 4 Who shall ascend into heaven ? ' 
(that is, to bring Christ down from above ;) or, 4 Who shall de- 
scend into the deep ? ' (that is, to bring up Christ again from 
the dead.) " But what saith it ? " The word is nigh thee, even 
in thy mouth, and in thy heart" : that is, the word of faith 
which we preach. 

The Apostle's reasoning I understand to be as fol- 
lows : If you would claim Christian justification — 
that is, a place in the Christian community — as your 
right on the ground of your obedience to the Jewish 
law, you must be able to show that you have rendered 
a perfect obedience, agreeably to a strict interpretation 
of that principle laid down by Moses (Lev. xviii. 5). 
But this no man can show. It concerns all men, then, 
to approve and admit that simple method of justifica- 
tion, whose only condition is belief. So easy and ac- 
cessible and attainable is it, as to admit of a natural 
application to it of that language in which Moses de- 
clares how freely his Law offers itself and its benefits 
to the well-disposed mind. Of that Law, says Paul, 



X. 15-21.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 259 

Moses affirms (Deut. xxx. 11-14) that it is not ne- 
cessary to explore the sky or the deep in search of it, 
for it is close at hand to every seeker. So it is, the 
Apostle adds, with Christ and his justification. They 
need not to be sought in the heaven, whither Christ is 
gone, nor in the abodes of the dead. They are to be 
had by whosoever will believe and profess ; and- this, 
he says yet further (Rom. x. 11, 13), is a doctrine 
which may be expressed in words of Isaiah (xxviii. 
16) and of Joel (ii. 32). 

X. 11-13. 

The Scripture saith, " Whosoever believeth on him shall not 

be ashamed Whosoever shall call upon the name of 

the Lord shall be saved." 

See Is. xlix. 23 ; Joel ii. 32 ; also the Septuagint 
version of Is. xxviii. 16, where, however, the Hebrew 
reads, " shall not make haste." 

X. 15-21. 

How shall they preach except they be sent? As it is written, 
" How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the Gospel 
of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things ! " But they 
have not all obeyed the Gospel : for Esaias saith, " Lord, 
who hath believed our report?" So then faith come th by 
hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But I say, Have 
they not heard ? Yes, verily, their sound went into all the 
earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. But I 
say, Did not Israel know ? First Moses saith, " I will pro- 
voke you to jealousy by them that are no people, and by a 
foolish nation I will anger you." But Esaias is very bold, 
and saith, " I was found of them that sought me not ; I was 
made manifest unto them that asked not after me." But to 
Israel he saith, " All day long I have stretched forth my hands 
unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." 

In this passage is a succession of quotations from 
the Old Testament, which it is plain that Paul merely 



260 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [X. 15-21. 

accommodates to the present uses of his argument 
with the Judaizing Christians. He vindicates his own 
preaching to the Gentiles. To the bearer of such a 
message as that which he publishes may be well ap- 
plied, he says, that language which the Old Testament 
writer used (Is. lii. 7) of the herald of the return of 
the tribes from their captivity in Babylon. " Does any 
wonder that my preaching, if intended by Divine Prov- 
idence to be addressed to the Gentiles, is not univer- 
sally effectual % It is no greater failure than was com- 
plained of by the ancient sage. (Is. liii. 1.) And the 
very words of his question, 6 Who hath believed our 
message ? ' import that it is through hearing such in- 
struction as I diffuse, that faith is produced. And 
as to a small number of believers having been gathered, 
it is not so. On the contrary, I rejoice to ask, have 
they not listened, as well as heard \ Yes, verily ; the 
diffusion of the Gospel doctrine may already be de- 
scribed in that language which the Psalmist uses (xix. 
4) of the universal proclamation of the heavenly lumi- 
naries. And has not Israel all along known, that 
God's favor might be extended to Gentiles ] Yes, as 
long ago as the time of Moses, God said that (in 
another sense, it is true) he would so favor the heathen, 
as that his people would be moved to angry jealousy. 
(Deut. xxxii. 21.) And elsewhere in the Old Testa- 
ment, very bold and strong language was used, more 
pertinent still to the case in hand, where it was said (Is. 
Ixv. 1,2), 'I was found of them that sought me not ; 
I was made manifest unto them that asked not after 
me.' "While the perversity of the Jews of the present 
day is well described in the same passage, where, con- 
cerning the Jews of that ancient time, God is repre- 
sented as saying, ' All day long I have stretched forth 
my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.' " 



XL 7-10.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 261 

XL 2-4. 

God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot 
ye not what the Scripture saith of Elias ? how he maketh 
intercession to God against Israel, "Lord, they have killed 
thy prophets, and digged down thine altars ; and I am 
left alone, and they seek my life." But what saith the an- 
swer of God unto him ? " I have reserved to myself seven 
thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of 
Baal." 

To the cavilling question, " Hath God cast away 
the people formerly known by him [acknowledged as 
his chosen] 1 " as if an exclusion of them were in- 
volved in an admission of believing Gentiles to equal 
privileges, Paul replies, in a use of Old Testament lan- 
guage, and in allusion to a fact of Scriptural history. 
By no means all Jews, he says, are left out from Christ's 
Church. Many are members of it ; and none are ex- 
cluded from it, but by their own fault. It is now even 
as it was in ancient times, when Elijah is related to 
have complained that Jehovah's service was univer- 
sally deserted, and to have been told that he still had 
many worshippers. (1 Kings xix. 14, 18.) — "What 
the Scripture saith of Elias " ; literally, in Elias. See 
above, pp. 130, 134. 

XI. 7 - 10. 

Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for ; but the elec- 
tion hath obtained it ; and the rest were blinded (according 
as it is written, " God hath given them the spirit of slumber, 
eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not 
hear ") unto this day. And David saith, " Let their table 
be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling-block, and a 
recompense unto them : let their eyes be darkened, that they 
may not see, and bow down their back alway." 

The Israelites, as a body, were formerly God's fa- 
vored, chosen, " elect " people. They would be so still, 
but for their own blindness, which, Paul says, may 



262 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XL 26, 27. 

well be described in language applied by ancient writ- 
ers (Is. xxix. 10 ; Deut. xxix. 4 ; Ps. lxix. 22, 23) to 
the stupidity and perverseness of men of their own 
times. 

XI. 26, 27. 

So all Israel shall be saved : as it is written, " There shall come 
out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness 
from Jacob : for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall 
take away their sins." 

The force of this quotation appears from attention 
to the emphatic words of the clauses by which it is 
introduced. " So" says the Apostle, " all Israel shall 
be saved " (that is, all Israel that is saved at all). So 
it shall be saved. How ? By a process which words 
of ancient Scripture well describe. (Is. lix. 20, 21.) 
"As it is written"; that is, by the Deliverer's "turn- 
ing away ungodliness from Jacob," and by " the taking 
away of their sins." Through this " ungodliness," 
through these " sins," they incurred that blindness by 
which they kept themselves out of the communion of 
Christians. When their moral incapacities were taken 
away, the blindness which made them unbelievers 
would be dispelled, and the way into Christ's fold, 
through faith, would be unimpeded. 

XL 34. 

Who hath known the mind of the Lord ? or who hath been his 
counsellor ? 

Without the form of quotation, the Apostle here 
clothes his thought in the words of Old Testament 
Scripture. (Is. xl. 13, 14.) 

XII. 19, 20. 

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place 
unto wrath : for it is written, " Vengeance is mine ; I will 



XV. 3.] EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 263 

repay, saith the Lord." Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, 
feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink : for in so doing thou 
shalt heap coals of fire on his head. 

The purport of these quotations (from Deut. xxxii. 
35 and Pro v. xxv. 21, 22) is too plain to demand any 
comment. 

XIII. 8-10. 

He that loveth another hath fulfilled the Law. For this, Thou 
shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not 
steal, Thou shalt not covet ; and if there be any other com- 
mandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, name- 
ly, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh 
no ill to his neighbor : therefore love is the fulfilling of the 
Law. 

" The Law " of social duty, expressed in the com- 
mandments of the second table (Exod. xx. 12-17; 
comp. Rom. xiii. 9), consists, with one exception (Exod. 
xx. 12), of prohibitions of different kinds of "ill" to 
our " neighbor." But " love " — the principle of the 
command, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" 
— " worketh no ill to his neighbor." The whole com- 
prehends every part ; and so " love is the fulfilling 
of the Law." 

XIV. 11-13. 

It is written, "As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow 

to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." So then 

every one of us shall give account of himself to God. Let 
us not, therefore, judge one another any more. 

A natural application of words in which an ancient 
writer (Is. xlv. 23) expresses his hope of a future uni- 
versal worship of Jehovah. 

XV. 3. 

For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, "The 
reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me." 



264 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XV. 4. 

The quotation is from a Psalm (lxix. 9 ; comp. 
" Lectures," &c., Vol. IV. p. 323) in which it is alto- 
gether unquestionable that the writer was speaking of 
himself. He addresses himself to God, and says, 
" The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up " ; and then 
follow the words which Paul adopts. This language, 
the Apostle says, may well be applied to Christ, who, 
in the service of God, exposed himself to the insults 
of God's enemies. 

XV. 4. 

Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our 
learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scrip- 
tures might have hope. 

" Whatsoever things were written aforetime were 
written for our instruction," just as every thing is 
done for our profit, that we actually profit by. Pro- 
vided we derive a hopeful spirit of resignation and 
tranquillity from the Scriptures, then it turns out 
that they were written, " that we, through patience 
and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope." 
Caesar was not slain with any view to discourage the 
ambitious schemes of Napoleon. But if Napoleon 
had been deterred by reading the record of that deed, 
it would have been done and recorded for his admoni- 
tion. Such is the unquestionable use of language. 
(See above, p. 26 et seq.) And thus it is that Paul, 
having applied to Christ language used by a writer 
who, in ancient times, had been persecuted for his re- 
ligious loyalty, says, that " whatsoever things were 
written aforetime " may be put to the use of instruct- 
ing men in later days. 

XV. 8-12. 

Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision 
for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the 



XV. 20, 21.] EPISTLE TO THE KOMANS. 265 

fathers ; and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his 
mercy ; as it is written, " For this cause I will confess to 
thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name." And 
again he saith, " Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people." 
And again, "Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles ; and laud him, 
all ye people." And again Esaias saith, " There shall be a 
root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gen- 
tiles ; in him shall the Gentiles trust." 

Jesus Christ, says Paul, " was a minister of the cir- 
cumcision," — that is, born of, or commissioned to, the 
covenant race, — to bring about (not to contravene, as 
it was pretended that indulgence to the Gentiles would 
do) the true purpose of God, and to fulfil an expecta- 
tion raised by the very fathers of the Jewish line ; 
viz. that the Gentiles should have occasion to " glorify 
God for his mercy." And this point he establishes by 
quotations from ancient Scripture, in which the heathen 
are spoken of as future worshippers of Jehovah, and 
destined to share in the blessings of the Messiah's reign. 
(Ps. xviii. 49 ; Deut. xxxii. 43 ; Ps. cxvii. 1 ; Is. xi. 
10 ; comp. Gen. xviii. 18, xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14.) 

XV. 20,21. 

Yea, so have I strived to preach the Gospel, not where Christ 
was named, lest I should build upon another man's founda- 
tion : but, as it is written, " To whom he was not spoken of, 
they shall see : and they that have not heard shall under- 
stand." 

Who can for a moment doubt that these words (from 
Is. lii. 15), used by the original writer in an entirely 
different sense, are here applied by St. Paul, in the 
way of mere rhetorical accommodation, to the plan 
which he declares himself to have pursued, of carry- 
ing the message of Christianity to regions where no 
preacher had preceded him 1 
23 



266 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XVI. 25, 26. 

XVI. 25, 26. 

The mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but 
now is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, 
according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made 
known to all nations for the obedience of faith. 

The " mystery " — the hitherto unknown truth of 
the Gospel — " kept secret since the world (6 alcov) 
began," — from the very beginning of that dispensa- 
tion which the Gospel was to succeed, — was now 
" made known to all nations" And it was made 
known " by the Scriptures of the prophets," because 
those writers had from time to time expressed their 
expectation that " all nations " would ultimately in 
some way have a place in God's benignant regard. 
(See, e. g., the texts quoted on the last page.) 



SECTION II. 

FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 

The quotations in this Epistle are all of that kind 
which present no difficulty to the interpreter who 
adopts the principles on which I have proceeded ; 
while most of them would be explained on those prin- 
ciples, by critics of any school whatever. They are 
instances of accommodation by Paul, to his own uses, 
of language used by writers of the Old Testament, 
without any intimation that the application made of 
the words by the Apostle had been in the mind of 
the original writer. Having made this remark once 
for all, I need scarcely do more than set down Paul's 
words, with references to the passages from which they 
respectively quote. 



II. 9, 10.] FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 267 

I. 2. 

To them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. 

They were " sanctified " and " saints " collectively, 
as constituting a community of believers in Christ's 
religion. (See above, pp. 225 - 228.) 

I. 19. 

It is written, " I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will 
bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." 

Rebuking the presumption of his contemporaries, 
Isaiah (xxix. 14 ; comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. III. p. 
222) had represented Jehovah as using this threat 
concerning them. Paul appropriately applies the lan- 
guage to the ambitious marplots of his own day. In 
part of the following verse, " Where is the wise 1 
where is the scribe % " Paul seems to have had in mind 
an expression of Isaiah in a different place (xxxiii. 18). 

I. 31. 

According as it is written, " He that glorieth, let him glory in 
the Lord." 

An inaccurate citation from the Book of Jeremiah 
(ix. 24). 

II. 9, 10. 

As it is written, " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man, the things which God 
hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed 
them unto us by his Spirit." 

An ancient writer (Is. lxiv. 4 ; comp. " Lectures," 
&c., Vol. III. p. 270) had made this remark concerning 
the marvellous providences of God. Paul applies it, 
without verbal exactness, to that token of God's gra- 
cious providence, given in the revelation of Chris- 
tianity. 



268 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 16. 

II. 16. 

Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct 
him ? 

Without formal quotation, Paul seems to be using 
Old Testament language. (See Isaiah xl. 13.) 

III. 19,20. 

The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is 
written, " He taketh the wise in their own craftiness." And 
again, " The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that 
they are vain." 

The sentences quoted are from the Books of Job 
(v. 13) and the Psalms (xciv. 11). 

V. 7, 8. 

For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us : therefore let 
us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven 
of malice and wickedness ; but with the unleavened bread of 
sincerity and truth. 

Language strongly figurative, but quite intelligible, 
if we do not undertake to refine too far. The Jews, 
when the paschal lamb was slain, feasted upon it with 
unleavened bread. (" Lectures," &c., Vol. I. p. 137.) 
" Our passover, too, is slain for us, even Christ," says 
the Apostle (such is the exact rendering of the words). 
By his death a feast is spread for us, — the feast of 
God's grace. Let us gladly keep the offered festivity; 
and, instead of a " leaven of malice and wickedness," 
— a fermenting element of angry passions, — let our 
unleavened bread be a spirit of sincerity and truth. 

VI. 16. 

What ! know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one 
body ? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. 

To a hasty view, the form of Paul's argument here 
is that of an appeal to Scriptural authority. But he 



X 1-5.] FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 269 

could have intended no more than such an illustration 
as any book, without authority, would afford. For the 
passage to which he refers (Gen. ii. 24) relates pro- 
fessedly and solely to the conjugal relation, and not at 
all to the relation of which he is speaking. 

IX. 9, 10. 

It is written in the Law of Moses, " Thou shalt not muzzle the 
mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn." Doth God take 
care for oxen ? or saith he it altogether for our sakes ? for 
our sakes, no doubt, this is written. 

Nothing can be clearer than that the provision of 
the Mosaic Law here referred to (Deut. xxv. 4) was 
intended to have a merely literal interpretation. St. 
Paul, urging the rightful claim of preachers of the 
Gospel to a support, quotes the words as embodying a 
principle which demanded a much wider application 
than that originally designed. " Is God careful for 
oxen % " he asks (that is, for oxen alone) ; " or is he as- 
suredly saying it for our benefit % For our sakes, no 
doubt, this is written." It was written for them, not 
at all as having originally had them in view, but as 
susceptible of a useful application to their case. It is 
a result, and not a design, that Paul indicates (the e«- 
PariKov, as distinguished from the anioXo^iKov. See 
above, pp. 27, 28 ; also Rom. xv. 4 ; 1 Cor. x. 6, 11). 

X. 1-5. 

For, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how 
that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed 
through the sea ; and were all baptized unto Moses in the 
cloud and in the sea ; and did all eat the same spiritual meat ; 
and did all drink the same spiritual drink ; for they drank of 
that spiritual Rock that followed them : and that Rock was 
Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased ; 
for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 

23* 



270 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [X. 1-5. 

The point which St. Paul is urging is, that justified 
persons, persons who have been received into the com- 
munity of believers, the Christian Church, may, after 
all, through misconduct, fail of the Divine favor and 
acceptance. And this point he illustrates by allusions 
to Jewish history. The signs of a place in the Chris- 
tian brotherhood were baptism, and eating and drink- 
ing the elements of the Lord's Supper. So it might 
be said that the Jews, at their Exodus, were " baptized 
unto Moses" by the spray of the Red Sea through 
which they passed, and the guiding cloud which went 
before them in their marches, and that they kept a 
Eucharist together when they refreshed themselves on 
the manna and the water supernaturally provided in 
the wilderness. Yet, after all, " with many of them 
God was not well pleased " ; the proof of which was, 
that " they were overthrown in the wilderness" (Numb, 
xiv. 37, xxv. 11). And so it might be with Christians ; 
they, like those Jews, might be faithless to their privi- 
leges, and fall away from God's favor. — " They drank 
of the spiritual Rock that followed them " (x. 4). Illus- 
trations of this expression have been drawn from an 
alleged legend of the Jews to the effect that a run of 
water accompanied their fathers in the march through 
the wilderness. (See Schottgen ad loc.) But I appre- 
hend it to be in consonance with common use, to un- 
derstand the word " follow " as denoting simply re- 
peated occurrence. The rock followed them, because 
they drank from it at different times (Exod. xvii. 6 ; 
Numb. xx. 11 ; comp. Ps. lxviii. 9, xxiii. 6). — " And 
the rock was Christ " (ibid.) ; that is, Just as I have 
made of the passage through the .Red Sea an emblem 
of Christian baptism, and of the supply of manna an 
emblem of the Christian eucharist, so by the rock 
from which our fathers drank in the wilderness, I 



X. 11.] FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 271 

symbolize Christ, the source of our souls' refresh- 
ment. 

X. 6. 

Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should 
not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. 

The narratives referred to " were our examples " 
(or rather, warnings), because capable of imparting to 
us instruction. (See above, pp. 264, 269.) 

X. 9. 

Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and 
were destroyed of serpents. 

As in the two next preceding verses (comp. Exod. 
xxxii. 6 ; Numb. xxv. 9), and in the next following 
(comp. Numb. xiv. 2, 35), so in this, the Apostle refers 
to a narrative in the Law (Numb. xxi. 5, 6). The word 
" Christ " is of doubtful authenticity. In its place, 
some of the best authorities (manuscripts and versions) 
read Lord, and others, God. If we accept Christ as 
the true reading, we shall then understand an ellipsis 
after the second " tempted " (" as some of them also 
tempted [God]," &c.), or we shall understand Christ, in 
this place, as a descriptive title, applicable to Moses 
as well as Jesus, and not as a proper name (" Neither 
let us tempt our anointed leader, as some of them did 
theirs "). 

X. 11. 

Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples : and 
they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of 
the world are come. 

The same exposition is here required as in the 
statement to the same effect, a few verses back (1 Cor. 
x. 6). 



272 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [X. 20, 26. 

X. 20, 26. 

They sacrifice to devils, and not to God. 

The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. 

The Apostle seems to be interweaving sentences 
of old Scripture into his discourse (Deut. xxxii. 1 7 ; 
Ps. xxiv. 1). 

XL 8, 9. 

For the man is not of the woman ; but the woman of the man. 
Neither was the man created for the woman ; but the woman 
for the man. 

It has been thought that here are references to the 
account of the creation of Eve, in Genesis (ii. 18, 21). 
But this is uncertain ; Paul says nothing expressly to 
that effect ; and it becomes less probable when we con- 
sider that the same Old Testament book contains a 
different account of the origin of the human race 
(Gen. i. 26, 27 ; comp. « Lectures," &c, Vol. II. p. 35). 
Quite independently of any allusion to the first Book 
of Moses, Paul might say that woman belonged to 
man, and was created for his benefit. But supposing 
that there was such an allusion, it would not imply 
any certificate on Paul's part of the historical correct- 
ness of that account. It would be more naturally in- 
terpreted as simply an argumentum ad hominem. 

XIV. 21, 22. 

In the Law it is written, " With men of other tongues and other 
lips will I speak unto this people ; and yet for all that will 
they not hear me, saith the Lord." Wherefore tongues are 
for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe 
not. 

" In the Law it is written " (21). Here, as in some 
other places, the word Law stands for the whole vol- 
ume of Old Testament Scriptures. (Comp. John x. 34, 






XIV. 21,22.] FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 273 

xv. 25.) Paul's reference, made evidently from mem- 
ory, is a loose and inexact one to two disconnected 
passages of the Prophets Isaiah (xxviii. 11, 12) and 
Jeremiah (v. 14, 15). Isaiah says, "With stammering 
lips, and another tongue, will he speak to this people ; 

yet they would not hear " ; which Lowth (note 

ad loc), with sufficient correctness, paraphrases thus : 
" Ye shall be taught, by a strange tongue, and a stam- 
mering lip, in a strange country ; ye shall be carried 
into captivity by a people whose language shall be un- 
intelligible to you, and which ye shall be forced to 
learn like children." Jeremiah's language (which 
Paul may be thought to have had especially in view, 
when in his quoted words he represents God as speak- 
ing, which the passage in Isaiah does not) is, " Where- 
fore, thus saith the Lord of hosts : ' Lo, I will 

bring a nation upon you from far, O house of Israel,' 
saith the Lord ; ' it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient 
nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, 
neither understandest what they say.' " Here, too, the 
sole meaning evidently is that God's vengeance should 
be visited upon Israel through the agency of invaders, 
of foreign race and speech. It is simply in the way 
of a rhetorical application, that St. Paul uses the an- 
cient writer's words. Not to say that their tenor and 
purpose were quite aside from those of his argument, 
he would, at least, had he intended to use them in the 
way of argument, have felt bound to use them with 
some precision. His statement is simply equivalent to 
the following : When God, of old, permitted alien in- 
vaders to execute his judgments on his people, he was 
said to have spoken to his people " by other tongues 
and other lips." It was the disobedient, and not the 
faithful, whom he then addressed. The same is true 
now, in a different sense. Now, too, when he employs 



274 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XIV. 34. 

instruments speaking foreign languages, he appeals 
thereby " not to them that believe, but to them that 
believe not." 

XIV. 34. 

They are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the 
Law. 

See Gen. iii. 16. The words they are commanded^ 
are supplied by our translators. Nothing correspond- 
ing to them was written by Paul, nor does he give any 
intimation that a rule is binding on the conscience of 
believers, by force of being found recorded in the Book 
of Genesis. He says that it belongs to women "to 
be under obedience," a position also assigned to the 
women for whom he wrote by the Law which they 
revered. He says that it is their place, and that, in so 
declaring, he declares no more than a rule of behavior 
which they own. (Comp. below, p. 295.) 

XV. 3, 4. 

I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how 
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures ; and 
that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day ac- 
cording to the Scriptures. 

What does Paul mean here by " the Scriptures " % 
In the Second Epistle of Peter (iii. 16) we find Paul's 
writings referred to as Scriptures. Did Paul here use 
the phrase in the same way, as indicating writings of 
his Christian associates ? I do not suppose that he 
could allude to either of our Four Gospels, for I 
understand them all to have been composed later than 
Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians. But other works 
of the same sort were earlier in circulation (Luke i. 
1,2); and it is supposable that it was one or more of 
them that Paul had in view when he said that what 



XV. 3, 4.] FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 275 

he orally delivered was according to what others had 
written. So the author of the Epistle of James quotes 
as " Scripture " some book not belonging to the collec- 
tion which we call by that name (iv. 5). 

If, however, by " the Scriptures," he meant the 
books of the Old Testament, in what sense was it that 
he declared Christ to have died, to have been buried, 
and to have risen " again the third day, according to 
the Scriptures " 1 For whoever may suppose that he 
finds Christ's death and burial alluded to in the Jewish 
books, no one will pretend that they speak of Christ's 
rising, still less of his rising on the third day. My ex- 
planation of this, provided we suppose the " Scrip- 
tures " of the Old Testament to be referred to, depends 
on the force of the word rendered " according to " 
(Kara). I think that, by rules both of etymology and 
common sense, the accordance here indicated may be 
understood as merely absence of contradiction. Con- 
trariety and consistency exhaust the relations between 
a fact and a written statement connected with it. 
When there is not contrariety, there is a sort of ac 
cord. Entertaining those entirely incorrect views 
which the Jews of Paul's time did entertain concern- 
ing the coming Messiah, they imagined the alleged 
facts of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus to 
be fatal to the pretensions of Jesus to be the Messiah, 
inasmuch as they were contradicted by the whole tenor 
of ancient Scripture. Paul, on the contrary, held, and 
here declares, that those Scriptures, when rightly esti- 
mated as to their authority, and rightly interpreted as 
to their sense, did not contradict his declarations 
respecting Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. In 
the sense of being reconcilable with, not contradictory 
to, the true original idea of the Christ, as presented in 
the Old Testament books, those facts were " according 



276 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XV. 20. 

to the Scriptures." The accordance here indicated is 
the converse of the opposition referred to by Paul in a 
similar connection in the words (Acts xxvi. 22, 23), 
" saying none other things than those which the Proph- 
ets and Moses did say should come, that Christ should 
suffer," &c. (See above, pp. 20, 223.) 

XV. 20. 

Now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that 
slept. 

The metaphor of " first fruits " is drawn from the 
Law. The word used here [airapxn) appears to denote 
prime fruit, fruit first in point of excellence, while 
another word {irpcdToyevv^ixa) means fruit first in point 
of time. So Origen says (" Opp.," Tom. IV. p. 4, edit. 

Delarue), " One would not err in calling the Law 

of Moses the earliest fruit (irpcoroyew^fjia^ and the Gospel 
the prime fruit (aTrapxv)" The distinction is observed 
in the Septuagint, though overlooked in our English 
version. Christ was not the " first fruits of them that 
slept," in the sense of having been restored to life 
before any other, but in the sense of being the most 
excellent, the chief, the leader, the head, of them that 
have slept and risen. 

XV. 22. 

As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. 

By the phrase " all in Adam," every one under- 
stands, all mankind, just as to speak of a person as 
" in Christ " (comp. Horn. xvi. 7) is to describe him as 
a Christian. Into such forms of expression every 
writer and speaker naturally slides. It would be alto- 
gether unsafe at this day to argue from a person's 
using the phrase " every son of Adam " in the sense 



XV. 25-27.] FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 277 

of the whole human race, that he believed in what is 
related of Adam in the beginning of Genesis as his- 
torical fact. Equally unjust would it be to Paul to 
frame such an argument from his words. By force of 
ancient usage, founded originally in error, we naturally 
speak of the rising and setting of the sun. Must every 
one who uses those forms of expression be held as de- 
claring his belief in the false natural philosophy which 
they imply % We speak of certain physical affections 
under the names of St. Vitus' s dance, and St. Anthony's 
fire. By the use of this phraseology, do we pledge 
ourselves to any theory of disease 1 

If by the language " as in Adam all die," we see 
cause rather to understand " as all men die with [or, 
like] Adam " (comp. 1 Cor. iv. 21 ; Heb. ix. 25 ; 
2 Cor. xiii. 4 ; Col. ii. 6), the reasoning as to the question 
in hand will be the same. In the mention of Adam 
as the person with whom that universal mortality be- 
gan which was the only thing to his purpose, and 
which was well known by experience, Paul will be 
understood as employing a form of expression, or of 
thought, familiar to his countrymen, without proposing 
to vouch for the correctness of the traditionary opin- 
ion in which it had its origin. 

XV. 25-27. 

He must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The 
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath 
put all things under his feet. 

In expressing his conviction of the future universal 
empire of his Master, Paul does but advert to the lan- 
guage of a writer of former days who had no higher 
conception of the Messiah than as a splendid earthly 
sovereign, at whose feet Jehovah, his patron, would 
24 



278 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [XV. 32. 

strike down all his foes. (Ps. ex. 1 ; comp. " Lectures," 
&c.,Vol. IV. pp. 314-316.) 

XV. 32. 

If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
we die. 

Paul remembers words of an ancient writer (Is. xxii. 
13) which forcibly express his thought, and adopts 
them accordingly. 

XV. 45. 

And so it is written, " The first man Adam was made a living 
soul ; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." 

Where is this " written " % The first clause, or rather 
what is very like the first clause, in the Book of Gen- 
esis (ii. 7) ; the latter clause, in no book that we are 
acquainted with. 

XV. 54, 55. 

When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this 
mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought 
to pass the saying that is written, " Death is swallowed up in 
victory. O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is 
thy victory ? " 

There is in these verses a certain resemblance to 
two passages of the prophetical writings (Is. xxv. 8 ; 
Ho sea xiii. 14) ; but no otherwise than in the way of 
verbal accommodation. 



I. I.] SECOND EPISTLE TO THE COKINTHIANS. 279 

SECTION III. 
SECOND EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 

Most of the references to the Old Testament in this 
Epistle consist of quotations such as are used by all 
writers to give liveliness to a discourse, and raise no 
question as to the construction put upon the Jewish 
Scriptures by the author of the book. See 2 Corinthi- 
ans iv. 13 (comp. Ps. cxvi. 10) ; vi. 2 (comp. Is. xlix. 8) ; 
vi. 16-18 (comp. Lev. xxvi. 11, 12, Is. lii. 11, 12, 
2 Sam. vii. 14); viii. 15 (comp. Exod. xvi. 18); ix. 6 
(comp. Prov. xi. 24, xxii. 8) ; ix. 9 (comp. Ps. cxii. 9) ; 
xiii. 1 (comp. Deut. xix. 15). In most of these instan- 
ces, the words quoted are applied in their original sense ; 
in some, as in the last specified, where the Apostle 
speaks of his three journeys as three " witnesses" to 
the conduct of his Corinthian converts, the reader sees 
an example of the habit of the New Testament writers 
to accommodate Old Testament language to meanings 
and uses of their own. 

In one chapter of this Epistle (iii. 7-16), a fanciful 
application is made, in different ways, of the relation 
(Exod. xxxiv. 29, 30, 33-35) that when Moses came 
down from Mount Sinai, after receiving the elementary 
Law, his face was radiant, and he covered it with a 
veil. Having only a rhetorical embellishment in view, 
Paul adopted that interpretation of this narrative which 
was current in his time, as it is in ours, though its 
correctness is by no means unquestionable. (See 
« Lectures," &c, Vol. I. p. 229, note.) 

I. 1. 

All the saints which are in all Achaia. 



280 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [HI. 7, 8. 

That is, the receivers of Christianity. (See above, 
pp. 225-228.) 

III. 7, 8. 

If the ministration of death in letters, engraven in stones, 
was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stead- 
fastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his counte- 
nance, which glory was to be done away ; how shall not the 
ministration of the spirit be rather glorious ? 

Paul's ministry was a " ministration of the spirit " 
(comp. iii. 6), because it imparted rich spiritual privi- 
leges, hitherto unenjoyed. The ministry of Moses 
was a " ministration of death," because it dealt largely 
in denunciations of death ; capital punishment was its 
great penalty. It was for the most part a code of 
hard and rigid law, having appropriately its elemen- 
tary doctrines "written and engraven in stones" (comp. 
Exod. xxxi. 18) ; yet, in all its inferiority to the Gospel, 
so " glorious " was it, that the face of its bearer Moses 
was suffused with a transitory, indeed, but an intolera- 
ble brightness. How intensely glorious, then, must 
be the superior " ministration of the spirit " ! Every 
judicious reader sees here, not argument (which was 
not intended), but the natural use of an historical 
statement in the way of poetical illustration of a glow- 
ing thought. 

III. 13 - 15. 

Not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children 
of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which 
is abolished : but their minds were blinded ; for until this day 
remaineth the same veil in the reading of the Old Testa- 
ment ; it not being revealed that it is done away in Christ. 
But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is 
upon their heart. 

Entirely changing the application of the circum- 
stances of the same narrative, Paul now represents 



XL 3.] SECOND EPISTLE TO THE COEINTHIANS. 281 

the veil as drawn over the hearts of his countrymen, 
to blind them " in the reading of the Old Testament," 
and only to be removed by Christ. How can any re- 
flecting person attend to such language as this, and 
continue to maintain that, whenever the New Testa- 
ment writers use a passage from the Old, they intend 
to adduce it in its original sense, and make it, as such, 
a basis for their argument 1 

VII. 15. 

What concord hath Christ with Beliar ? 

By its etymology, Belial (7J£* v3, of which Beliar is 
the Syriac form) means worthlessness. In the Old 
Testament the word only appears in combination with 
"children" (Deut. xiii. 13), "sons" (Judges xix. 
22), "daughter" (1 Sam. i. 16), and "man" (1 Sam. 
xxv. 25). 

XI. 3. 

I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through 
his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the 
simplicity that is in Christ. 

Nothing can possibly be inferred from this language 
as to Paul's opinion of the fabulous or historical char- 
acter of the history, in Genesis, of the serpent and 
Eve. Should I say, " I fear you will be tantalized as 
Tantalus was, when the water for which he thirsted 
would go no further than his lips," by no sound prin- 
ciple of interpretation could my words be shown to 
imply that I recognized the story of Tantalus as the 
record of a fact. 



24 * 



282 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 16. 

SECTION IV. 
EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 

II. 16. 

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, 
but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in 
Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, 
and not by the works of the Law ; for by the works of the 
Law shall no flesh be justified. 

The sense of these words, and the import of the 
doctrine they express, have been fully discussed in my 
remarks on the corresponding statement in the Epistle 
to the Romans. (See above, pp. 228 - 242.) 

III. 6, 7. 

Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for right- 
eousness. Know ye, therefore, that they which are of faith, 
the same are the children of Abraham. 

The Apostle here makes the same use of a state- 
ment in Genesis (xv. 6) as he makes in his Epistle to 
the Romans. (See above, pp. 234, 246.) Belief in 
God, he says here, was, according to the ancient rec- 
ord, Abraham's sole title to " righteousness " ; that is, 
to justification. And it is so, he argues, with all men, 
as much as with Abraham. Faith is the only princi- 
ple and condition of admittance to the privileges con- 
veyed by God's revealed truth. Not the descendants 
of Abraham by birth are his spiritual heirs, as the 
Jews maintained, nor those who, like that patriarch, 
observed the rite of circumcision, but those who, like 
him, believed ; " they which are of faith, the same are 
the children of Abraham." 



III. 10-12.] EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 283 

III. 8, 9. 

The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen 
through faith, preached before the Gospel unto Abraham, 
saying, " In thee shall all nations be blessed." So then they 
which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. 

Paul here adopts the obvious sense of the Divine 
promise anciently made to Abraham (Gen. xviii. 18, 
xxii. 18), as indicating that other nations, besides that 
of which he was to be the progenitor, were to receive 
benefits through him ; a promise which was, in the 
fulness of time, to be accomplished by the agency of 
Jesus, his descendant. But how could " the heathen," 
" all nations," be blessed in Abraham, " with faithful 
Abraham " % Clearly, by the terms of the case, it 
could not be by virtue of any hereditary transmission 
of the blessing in his custody, for the Gentiles were 
aliens from his blood. That " all nations" were to be 
blessed in him, Scripture had declared. They could 
not be blessed in him by virtue of being his posterity ; 
for his posterity they were not. There was but one 
other way ; and this, Paul argued, was the true way. 
They must come to be blessed in Abraham, by the 
same means by which Abraham himself had ob- 
tained the blessing. They must be justified by believ- 
ing, even as Abraham had been justified. 

III. 10-12. 

For as many as are of the works of the Law are under the 
curse : for it is written, " Cursed is every one that continueth 
not in all things which are written in the book of the Law to 
do them." But that no man is justified by the Law in the 
sight of God, it is evident : for, " The just by faith shall live." 
And the Law is not of faith : but, " He that doeth them shall 
live in them." 

Paul meets these punctilious Jewish reasoners on 
their own ground. When you undertake, he says, so 



284 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 13, 14. 

to exalt the authority of the Law, consider what that 
authority declares. Before you presume to rely for 
your justification on your observance of the Law, and 
to exclude from justification those who do not keep 
the Law, observe that, by its own terms, your preten- 
sions will be overthrown. What blessing can it give 
you, on the ground you assume, when, on the contrary, 
it expressly denounces a curse (Deut. xxvii. 26) against 
whoever does not perseveringly obey every one of its 
requisitions, which you very well know that no one 
of you does, and when the life it promises, according 
to its own language in another place, is only for those 
who keep its " statutes and judgments " (Lev. xviii. 5) ; 
while, according to another Old Testament writer 
(Hab. ii. 4), whose language well expresses the doc- 
trine insisted on by Paul, the spiritual life of the jus- 
tified is that which they attain to, not by means of 
keeping the Law, but by means of faith ? 

III. 13, 14. 

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law, (being 
made a curse for us, for it is written, " Cursed is every one 
that hangeth on a tree,") that the blessing of Abraham 
might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we 
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 

" The curse of the Law " here spoken of, I take to 
be the imprecation quoted, just above (Gal. hi. 10), by 
Paul. Christ had redeemed, or relieved, us from it, by 
bringing believers under a different dispensation of 
religion from that to which this language related. 
The quotation which follows (from Deut. xxi. 23) I 
have placed, with its introduction, in a parenthesis, to 
indicate the relation which, in my view, the sentence 
so constituted bears to the context. There is, I pre- 
sume, no imaginable sense in which Paul could have 



III. 16, 17.] EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 285 

intended to assert, as a substantial verity, that his 
Master was " made a curse." The passage which he 
quotes, relating to a matter as remote as possible from 
theological doctrine, prescribes a speedy burial of male- 
factors. (Comp. " Lectures," &c, Vol. I. p. 482, note||.) 
As Paul writes, and repeats freely the words blessing 
and curse, a passage in which the latter word is used 
occurs to his memory ; along with it, an idea presents 
itself, such as, in the profane writers, we are accus- 
tomed to call a conceit ; a vague resemblance strikes 
him between the crucifixion of Jesus, and the ancient 
exposure of the dead bodies of criminals by " hanging 
on a tree " ; by one of those rapid strokes, which in 
all writers give spirit to a composition without con- 
tributing to the main texture of discourse, he throws 
out the allusion in a brief parenthesis, and then passes 
on with his argument. It needs scarcely be added, 
that by " the blessing of Abraham " we are to under- 
stand the blessings to be conveyed through him to all 
nations, and by " the promise of the spirit " to be ob- 
tained " through faith," the spiritual privileges which 
were assured to the believer. 

III. 16, 17. 

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made (he 
saith not, " and to seeds," as of many, but as of one, " and 
to thy seed," which is Christ) ; and this I say, that the 
covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the 
Law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot 
disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. 

Here, again, I think that, by throwing a clause into 
a parenthesis, the relation of the different parts of the 
passage to each other is better exhibited. I understand 
the Apostle as making in it a passing suggestion, not 
belonging to the main thread of the argument, to this 



• 



• 



286 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 21-27. 

effect : Mark, by the way, that the Old Testament 
text (Gen. xvii. 7) speaks of one posterity, and not of 
several, as if designing to intimate the unity of a 
Church, which being one in Jesus its head (comp. Gal. 
iii. 28, 29) recognizes no distinction between Jew and 
Gentile. 

Paul's argument in the next verse is, that, according 
to the well-established principles of all contracts, the 
Mosaic Law, on which the Jews founded their exclu- 
sive claims, could not abrogate or change the condi- 
tions of that covenant with Abraham, " confirmed of 
God before as to Christ," in which it had been prom- 
ised that to all nations Abraham's posterity should 
impart blessings, to be secured by faith in their giver. 
— " The Law, which was four hundred and thirty 
years after." Four hundred and thirty years after 
what 1 After the covenant with Abraham, spoken of 
immediately before 1 There was, I suppose, an interval 
of six hundred and forty-five years between those two 
events. (Gen. xv. 13 ; Exod. xii. 41 ; Acts vii. 6 ; comp. 
" Lectures," &c., Vol. I. p. 140.) The reading of the 
Septuagint version, however, which was in the hands 
of Paul's Galatian friends, represented the interval as 
being but four hundred and thirty years ; and as his 
argument was equally good whether the time was 
longer or shorter, there was no reason why he should 
raise an irrelevant question by correcting the received 
computation. Or we may reconcile the figures by 
translating Paul's words (though the definite article is 
not expressed), " after the four hundred and thirty 
years " ; that is, the memorable four hundred and thirty 
years of African servitude. (Comp. Exod. xii. 41.) 

IV. 21-27. 

Tell me, ye that desire to be under the Law, do ye not hear the 



< 



IV. 21-27.] EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 287 

Law ? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one 
by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was 
of the bondwoman was born after the flesh ; but he of the 
freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory : 
for these are the two covenants ; the one from the Mount 
Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this 
Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem 
which now is, for she is in bondage with her children. But 
Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our mother. 
For it is written, " Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not ; 
break forth and cry, thou that travailest not ; for the desolate 
hath many more children than she which hath an husband." 

The sense of this passage is utterly obscured in our 
common version by a mistranslation of three Greek 
words (anva Igtiv aW^yopovjjieva). The rendering 
"which things are an allegory" represents Paul as 
saying precisely what he did not mean to say. The 
history of the births of Ishmael and Isaac was not an 
allegory ; nor did the Apostle so understand it ; nor 
does the grammatical construction of his words admit 
of such a version. We should read, "Which things 
[which historical facts] are allegorized" (that is, by 
Paul, in the manner which he goes on to state) ; or, 
" which things, when allegorized, are [or, stand] thus ; 
namely, these [the mothers of Abraham's sons] are 
[or, represent] the two covenants," &c. To allegorize 
is to frame an allegory; and an allegory is often 
framed on a basis of historical facts; and that is what 
Paul declares himself to be doing in the present in- 
stance. In this and another instance or two, he is a 
constructer of allegory, but an allegorical interpreter 
(who, of course, supposes allegory to exist before he 
proceeds to interpret on that supposition) I apprehend 
that Paul never is. (Comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. II. 
pp. 333, 334.) 

Paul recites with precision the narrative which he 



288 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 28-31. 

proposes to allegorize. "Abraham had two sons. 

He who was of the bondwoman was born after 

the flesh " ; — there was nothing supernatural in the 
circumstances of Ishmael's birth. (Gen. xvi. 15.) " But 
he of the freewoman was by promise " ; — Isaac was 
miraculously born, agreeably to a promise of Jehovah, 
after his mother had passed the age of child-bearing. 
(Gen. xviii. 10.) Taken as materials for an allegory, 
the mothers represent " the two covenants " ; Hagar, 
the Jewish ; Sarah, the Christian. Hagar, a slave, 
represents " the one from [the covenant given from] 
the Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage " ; " for 
this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia " [Mount Sinai 
goes in Arabia by the very name of Hagar (see Koppe, 
" Test. Nov.," Vol. V. pp. 136, 137)] ; and [in my 
allegory] she corresponds " to Jerusalem which now 
is, and is in bondage with her children [to the exist- 
ing Jewish institution, whose adherents render a slav- 
ish service]." But the superior [here I would change 
the punctuation, and read, *H Se avco, 'lepovaaX^ kkevOipa 
eo-rlv, and translate, She that is above (for this ren- 
dering see John viii. 23 ; Phil. iii. 14 ; Col. iii. 1, 2), 
the superior, that is, Sarah] is, or corresponds to, the 
free Jerusalem, the free Christian Church, " which 
is our mother," which numbers as its children us 
free Christians, as the free man Isaac was the son of 
the free woman, Sarah. And to us, in view of the 
growth to which the Christian Church is destined, 
may be applied what was said by the prophet (Is. liv. 1) 
to Sarah's posterity of old : " Rejoice, thou barren, that 
bearest not," &c. (Comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. III. 
p. 259.) 

IV. 28-31. 

Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. 
But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him 



V. 13, 14.] EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 289 

that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Neverthe- 
less, what saith the Scripture ? " Cast out the bondwoman 
and her son : for the son of the bondwoman shall not be 
heir with the son of the free woman." So then, brethren, 
we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. 

Paul pursues the allegorical application of the his- 
tory : As Isaac was a child of promise, being born 
according to the promise to Abraham (Gen. xviii. 10), 
so we are children of promise, being born, as it were, 
into the Christian Church, agreeably to another prom- 
ise to that patriarch (Gen. xii. 3). Ishmael, "born 
after the flesh, persecuted [with insult] him [Isaac] 
that was born after the spirit." (Gen. xxi. 9.) So we, 
the spiritual children of Abraham, are persecuted by 
his carnal children. But God's purpose of giving us 
Christians the inheritance of his grace is similar to 
his purpose for Isaac, expressed in ancient Scripture, 
where it said, " Cast out the bondwoman and her son, 
for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with 
the son of the free woman." (Gen. xxi. 10.) In short, 
brethren, in our origin and our privileges we answer 
to him of old who was son of the free woman, and 
not to him who was son of the slave. 

V. 13, 14. 

By love serve one another ; for all the Law is fulfilled in one 
word, even in this : " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." 

That is ; if you will be tenacious of the Law, show 
your attachment to it, not by observing circumcision 
(v. 1) or any other particular of its temporary ritual, 
but by the practice of that mutual charity which was 
its comprehensive rule (Lev. xix. 18), and is a rule of 
perpetual obligation. 
25 



290 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [IV. 7-10. 

SECTION V. 
EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 

IV. 7-10. 

Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure 
of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, "When he as- 
cended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts 
unto men." (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he 
also descended into the lower parts of the earth ? He 
that descended is the same also that ascended up far above 
all heavens, that he might fill all things.) 

The Apostle quotes here from a Psalm (lxviii. 18), 
where, according to the most approved translation, we 
read as follows, viz. : — 

" Thou hast ascended on high ; 
Thou hast led captive the vanquished ; 
Thou hast received gifts from men." 

The Psalm appears to be a triumphal ode on the 
occasion of the reconveyance of the ark to its place 
after some victory obtained by the Israelites over their 
neighbors on the northeastern frontier (lxviii. 15, 22). 
It is Jehovah who is addressed by the Psalmist in the 
quoted words. If the Apostle had intended to repre- 
sent them as having originally had any relation to the 
subject which he was treating, of course he would 
have taken care to quote them exactly, instead of 
changing the structure of the sentence as he has done, 
and making the material alteration of " gave " for " re- 
ceived." Nothing to the contrary of this remark can 
be inferred from the introductory words rendered 
" Wherefore he saith " ( Aio \eyei). They may be briefly 
rendered, " As to which the Scripture saith " ; meaning 
simply, The Scripture uses language which I may 



IV. 7-10.] EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 291 

apply to this matter. (Comp. Eph. v. 14 ; James iv. 
6 ; texts which are decisive as to this interpretation.) 

Paul had been reminding his Ephesian converts of 
the great exaltation they had attained in being " made 
to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. ii. 6, 
i. 3.) He subjoins the exhortation to do credit, by 
an humble walk, to the dignity of their calling : " I 
therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that 
ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are 
called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long- 
suffering, forbearing one another in love" (iv. 1, 2). 
It is to this topic, I think, that he means his quotation 
to apply. According to my view, his train of thought 
might be thus expressed : Be humble, that you may be 
exalted. Descend, that you may ascend. (Comp. Luke 
xiv. 10.) Do what God himself is represented to have 
done in that choral burst of triumph, in which he is 
said to have led captive his enemies, and to have " as- 
cended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all 
things." Observe that he is said to have " ascended." 
One can only ascend from a lower level ; and the word 
implies that God, not jealously adhering to the abode 
of his majesty, " descended first into the lower parts 
of the earth " (that is, " these lower regions," viz. 
the earthly, the terrestrial regions • not any " parts " 
which are " lower " in relation to the earth's surface, 
but the earth's surface itself, which is " lower " in re- 
lation to " heaven "). If God could first descend so 
that he might ascend to his greatness, so may you. — 
" Gave gifts unto men," instead of " received gifts from 
men," the Apostle perhaps wrote by an error of mem- 
ory. Perhaps he may have had authority for it, as 
the reading now appears in the Chaldee and Syriac 
versions. At all events, having done so, he makes a 
further application of the words accordingly. As, 



292 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [Y. 14. 

according to these quoted words, God anciently " gave 
gifts unto men," so, he says, God is giving them now ; 
to some he gives gifts to be Apostles ; to some, to be 
prophets, &c. (iv. 11). 

V. 14. 

Wherefore he saith, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from 
the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." 

Rather, "it saith." But who or what saith'? It 
has been customary with the commentators, but with 
little show of probability, to understand the Apostle 
as referring to some language of Isaiah (xxvi. 19, lx. 1). 
I suppose the words are simply a fragment of one of 
those sacred lyrics which it seems (Eph. v. 19) that 
the Ephesians used in their worship. They nearly fall 
into lines in one of the Anacreontic measures : — 

"Eyeipe 6 Ka$evdcov, 
Kal dvacrra €K tg>v veKpcov, 
'EirKpavo-ei croi 6 Xpicrros. 

I think we hear people introduce a quotation with 
the words " It says," when the quotation is from some 
well-known composition, of some degree of authority, 
greater or less ; — it may be, the Bible ; it may be, 
the catechism or the hymn-book. It seems sufficiently 
clear, from this instance, that it is not safe to maintain 
that the use of the form always implies a reference to 
some book of Scripture. 

V. 31, 32. 

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and 
shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. 
This is a great mystery : but I speak concerning Christ and 
the Church. 

No intelligent reader can doubt that these words, in 
their original use (Gen. ii. 24), were applied to the 



VI. 2, 3.] EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 293 

conjugal relation, and to that alone. Paul says that 
he turns them into a significant emblem or symbol 
(fjLvarripLov, comp. Apoc. i. 20, xvii, 5, 7), by making an 
application of them to the union subsisting between 
Christ and his Church. (Comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. 
II. p. 334.) 

VI. 2, 3. 

Honor thy father and mother (which is the first commandment 
with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou 
mayest live long on the earth). 

By the first clause inclosed in the parenthesis, I 
understand the Apostle to be calling attention to the 
fact, that this command is sanctioned by an encour- 
aging promise (comp. Exod. xx. 12), while those which 
precede it all bear the form of prohibition. And his 
words which follow, " that it may be well with thee," 
&c. (Eph. vi. 3), are merely a recital of that promise, 
and by no means his own declaration that long life is 
to be expected as the reward of filial obedience. 
(Comp. "Lectures," &c., Vol. I. p. 173, note; Ps. 
xxxvii. 27, 29.) Paul simply describes the command- 
ment to which he refers as being " the first command- 
ment which, in the Decalogue, was accompanied by a 
promise ; viz. the promise, ' That it may be well with 
thee/ " &c. 



25* 



294 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 16, 17. 

SECTION VI. 
EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 

II. 16, 17. 

Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in 
respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sab- 
bath days ; which are a shadow of things to come ; but the 
body is of Christ. 

The ritual Law, in comparison with that of Christ's 
religion, is as unsubstantial and ineffective as a shadow 
compared with a substance. Or, possibly, the idea is 
that the ritual of Moses prepared for the spiritual 
discipline of Christ's religion, as the shadow, thrown 
forward, is the precursor and herald of the substance. 
It is in vain to pretend to find here any such doctrine 
as that the old dispensation was typical of the new, 
in the technical sense held by divines. 



SECTION VII. 
SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 

II. 3, 4. 

Let no man deceive you by any means : for that day shall not 
come, except there come a falling away first, and that man 
of sin be revealed, the son of perdition ; who opposeth and 
exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is wor- 
shipped ; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing 
himself that he is God. 

It does not belong to my plan to inquire whom St. 
Paul means here by the " man of sin." In describing 



V. 17, 18.] FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 295 

his impious pretensions, Paul appears to have had in 
mind, in one clause, language used in the Book of 
Daniel of the Syrian scourge of God's people, Anti- 
ochus Epiphanes. Of that prince it had been said, 
" He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above 
every God." (Dan. xi. 36 ; comp. " Lectures," &c, 
Vol. IV. pp. 404, 451.) It is probable that Paul ac- 
commodates these words where he says that the man 
of sin " opposeth and exalteth himself above all that 
is called God," though the resemblance of phrase may 
be merely accidental. 



SECTION VIII. 

FIRST EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 
II. 12-14. 



I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the 
man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then 
Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being 
deceived, was in the transgression. 

This was a very sufficient and appropriate argument 
for Jewish women. (Comp. Gen. ii. 18, 22, iii. 6.) 
Zealous, like their teachers, for the Law, it was suita- 
ble to silence them by an appeal drawn from the letter 
of the Law. The Epistle had especial regard to Ju- 
daizing teachers and persons under their influence. 
(1 Tim. i. 5 - 11 ; comp. 2 Tim. iii. 6.) To turn their 
own weapons against them was a way of reasoning 
always recognized as legitimate. 

V. 17, 18. 

Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, 



296 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 9. 

especially they who labor in the word and doctrine. For the 
Scripture saith, " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth 
out the corn," and, " The laborer is worthy of his reward." 

In the former of these instances (Deut. xxv. 4), old 
Scripture directs one application of a general principle 
of justice, of which the Apostle commands another. 
The general statement of that principle, which, in the 
last clause, Paul appears also to refer to Scripture, is 
nowhere found therein in the words specified, though 
it is in sense. (Lev. xix. 13 ; Deut. xxiv. 14, 15.) 



SECTION IX. 

SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 

I. 9. 

Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not ac- 
cording to our works, but according to his own purpose and 
grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world 
began. 

God "hath saved us and called us with an holy 
calling " ; that is, he hath made us his covenant people, 
and invited us to the privileges of a revealed religion. 
(See above, pp. 225 - 228.) And this he hath done, 
" not according to our works " (see above, pp. 228 - 
242), but according to a purpose which (to be fulfilled, 
in good time, by the agency of Jesus) he entertained 
"before the world began" (irpo xpovcov alcovlcov), that is, 
which he entertained so early as before the time of the 
introduction of Judaism (see above, p. 78), and even 
announced before that time to the patriarchs. (Gen. 
xii. 3, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14.) 



III. 15, 16.] SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 297 

II. 8. 
Jesus Christ, of the seed of David. 

See above, p. 14; also, Eom. i. 3 and Gal. iv. 4. 

II. 19. 

The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, " The 
Lord knoweth them that are his." 

" The Lord will show who are his," Moses had said, 
at the time of the rebellion of Korah. (Numb. xvi. 5.) 
Paul appears to apply the words to God's recognition 
of his children in Christ. 

III. 8. 

As Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist 
the truth. 

Jannes and Jambres were the names given by the 
Targumists and Talmudists to two sons of Balaam, 
and to two Egyptian magicians, who, among other 
misdeeds, opposed the application of Moses (Exod. vii. 
11 eiseq.) to Pharaoh. (See Wetsten. "Nov. Test.," 
Tom. II. p. 362.) Paul's reference, in this instance, 
confirms what I have repeatedly said, in the course of 
these comments, of the legitimacy of drawing illustra- 
tions from fabulous characters and events. (See above, 
pp. 80, 113, &c.) 

III. 15, 16. 

From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are 
able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is 
in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, 
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness. 

It will not fail to be observed that in the common 
version the word is, which constitutes the copula of the 
propositions in the latter verse, is in Italic letters, indi- 



298 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 15, 16. 

eating that there is no word corresponding to it in the 
Greek original. Every proposition consists of a sub- 
ject, a predicate, and a copula expressed or understood 
to connect the two. In the Greek of this passage the 
copula is understood. The question is, where it is to 
be understood, and where, accordingly, in a translation, 
it is to be inserted. With fidelity to the original at 
least equal to that of our English translation, the 
Syriac and Vulgate, the earliest versions, as well as 
Clement, Origen, Tertullian, and others of the earliest 
Fathers, insert the copula further on, so as to represent 
the following collocation : All Scripture [or, every 
writing] given by inspiration of God is also profitable, 
&c. ; — thus merely affirming that whatever writings 
are so given are useful for teaching, &c., and not 
touching the question what particular writings are so 
given. 

But another question, not less important, relates 
to the force of the single word (BeoirvevcrTos) rendered 
by our translators, " given by inspiration of God." It 
is compounded of the two very common words signify- 
ing God, and breath or spirit. Oeov irvev[xa is God's 
spirit, or a divine, religious spirit ; and OeoirvevaTo*;, by 
etymological analogy, is an epithet signifying prompted, 
dictated, animated, by a religious spirit. 

The sentence accordingly will read, Every writing 
dictated by a religious spirit is useful for teaching, &c. 
Timothy, li from a child," had been acquainted with 
that collection of Old Testament writings known by 
the name of " Holy Scriptures." With some composi- 
tions of inferior value, it contained others to which 
the word Oeoirveva-ro^ deserved to be applied; among 
them the inspired communications of the great law- 
giver himself, to which that word was applicable in its 
highest sense. By the light they shed on the plan 



in. 15, 16.] SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 299 

which the Divine wisdom had been pursuing from the 
earliest separation of the Jewish race, and had now 
consummated in the revelation of the Gospel, they 
were able to make the reader " wise unto salvation 
through faith in Christ Jesus." 

In further illustration of this interesting passage, I 
copy at length a note appended by Mr. Norton to 
his publication (in 1820) of " Locke's Essay for the 
Understanding of St. Paul's Epistles ; and Le Clerc on 
Inspiration " : — 

" Before any thing can be inferred from this passage, 
it is necessary to determine the true meaning of the 
word 0eo7n/ei/0-To?, rendered given by inspiration of God. 
If this term does not necessarily imply any thing mi- 
raculous, then the text affords no evidence in favor of 
the opinion which it is quoted to support. 

" The word occurs nowhere else in the Scriptures ; 
and I have seen but one example produced of its use 
by any profane author.* As, however, we know the 
words of which it is compounded, and as analogous 
expressions are very common, there seems little diffi- 
culty in determining its meaning. 

" The force of the expression, then, I believe, is pre- 
cisely the same as if the writings spoken of had been 
said to be composed h> irvevixan ©eov, by the spirit of 
God. Now every one acquainted with the phraseolo- 
gy of the Scriptures knows that many things are as- 
cribed to the spirit, or the holy spirit, or the spirit of 
God, when no miraculous operation is supposed by the 
writer. The spirit of God is a term used in the 
Scriptures to denote (among other meanings) all in- 
fluences upon, and communications to, the human mind, 

* Phocylides, in the following line : — 

Tr}$ be OeoTrvevaTov vcxpirjs \6yos iariv apicrros. 



300 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [III. 15, 16. 

which the writer refers to God as their author ; whether 
they are considered as proceeding from him directly or 
remotely ; whether as miraculous, or as regulated by 
the ordinary laws of the physical and moral world ; 
whether they are to be referred immediately to an act 
of his power, or are the immediate consequence and 
result of means and motives, and the operation of 
other agents. The term is as often used to denote 
influences and communications not regarded as mirac- 
ulous, as to denote those which are thus regarded. 
All the means and motives which God employs to 
bring men to goodness, are referred to the Spirit of 
God ; and he who is affected by these means, and acts 
under the influence of these motives, is said to be 
actuated by the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God. 
Abundant evidence of what has just been stated may 
be found by consulting the lexicons and concordances 
of the Old and New Testaments, and especially 
Schleusner's article on the word irvev^ia, a translation 
of which, by Mr. Buckminster, is contained in the 
first volume of the General Repository. 

" Having settled the sense of the term Spirit of 
God, we may determine that of the word Oeoirvevaro^. 
This is to be understood in a similar latitude of signi- 
fication. It is equivalent, as has been said, to the 
words, ivritten by the Spirit of God ; and these words 
denote nothing more than written under those influences 
which proceed from God, whether miraculous or not. 
The writings thus characterized may have been the 
works of prophets, who received direct miraculous 
communications from God; or they may have been 
nothing more than the works of men, whose minds 
were acted upon by the motives which he presents, 
and who had that sense of religion and duty, which 
his dispensations to the Jewish nation were adapted 



III. 15, 16.] SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 301 

to produce. In the present case, the term is, I con- 
ceive, applied to writings of both these classes. 

" In the text in question, the rendering of the 
words irao-a ypa^rj by the words all Scripture, is in- 
correct. They should be translated every writing. 
Allowing the common reading and construction to be 
correct, the following rendering will, it is believed, 
express the true sense of the text, as nearly as it can 
be expressed in our language : — 

" Every writing (that is, of the Old Testament, the 
lepa ypafifiara, the Holy Scriptures, mentioned in the 
preceding verse) was composed under those influences 
which are from God, and is profitable, &c. 

" If this mode of reading and constructing the verse 
is correct, it may be regarded as a general proposition, 
not to be understood strictly and universally ; since it 
is at least doubtful whether the Apostle would have 
ascribed the Song of Solomon in any sense to divine 
influence. 

" But the text may be otherwise understood and 
thus rendered : — 

" Every writing, composed under those influences which 
are from God, is profitable, &c. 

" The account which has been given of the terms 
Spirit, Holy Spirit, and Spirit of God, will serve to 
explain other passages, which are usually quoted in 
defence of the doctrine of the inspiration of the whole 
of the Old and New Testaments." 



26 



302 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 1-3. 



SECTION X. 
EPISTLE TO TITUS. 

I. 1-3. 

The faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth 
which is after godliness (in hope of eternal life), which God, 
that cannot lie, promised before the world began ; but hath 
in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is 
committed unto me. 

I have inclosed in a parenthesis the words " in hope 
of eternal life," which I understand to be equivalent 
to " resting on a hope of eternal life," and to be added 
as a description of " the truth which is after godliness," 
that is, which is productive of godliness. According 
to this simple arrangement, it is not " eternal life," or 
" the hope of eternal life," which is declared by the 
Apostle to have been " promised " by God " before the 
world began " (77-/00 xpovcov alcovlcov) ; that is, before the 
times of the Jewish dispensation. (Comp. above, p. 
78.) We have no knowledge that eternal life, or the 
hope of it, was promised thus early ; but the contrary. 
What the Apostle truly declares to have been promised 
thus early (Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18, xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, 
xxviii. 14; Deut. xviii. 15) was, that "truth" after 
godliness, which, Paul adds, was " in due times mani- 
fested " through Jesus, and made known to the world 
" through preaching," in which Paul was employed. 

II. 14. 

A peculiar people. 

The disciples of Jesus, says Paul, sustain a special 
relation to God, as did the disciples of Moses of old. 
(See Exod. xix. 5 ; Deut. vii. 6, xiv. 2, xxvi. 18 ; and 
comp. above, pp. 225 - 228.) 



I. 9-12.] FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 303 

SECTION XI. 
FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 

I. 9-12. 

Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your 
souls. Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and 
searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should 
come unto you ; searching what, or what manner of time 
the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it 
testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory 
that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not 
unto themselves, but unto you, they did minister the things 
which are now reported unto you by them that have preached 
the Gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from 
heaven ; which things the angels desire to look into. 

From these words, Peter appears to me to have un- 
derstood the case of the ancient writers called Proph- 
ets, just as I have represented it. They were not 
inspired, or supernaturally instructed men. On the 
contrary, they had very imperfect apprehensions — 
apprehensions unsatisfactory to themselves — of that 
" grace that should come," to which they referred in 
vague language, founded on the promises made to 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Gen. xii. 3, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 
14), and on the promise made by Moses (Deut. xviii. 
15). They testified, indeed, through " the spirit of 
Christ which was in them " ; that is, a spirit, an im- 
pulse, which led them to speak of Christ. But as to 
what it " did signify," — what in particular was im- 
ported by the general language which Moses, their great 
authority on the subject, had used in relation to the 
coming teacher, — respecting this they were at a loss ; 
respecting this " they inquired and searched diligently " ; 
and, as appears from what they have written upon it, 



304 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [1.9-12. 

they inquired and searched with only partial success, 
arriving at conclusions very materially erroneous. The 
general terms in which Moses had foretold the com- 
ing " prophet like unto himself," had reference to, and 
ultimately had their fulfilment in, " the sufferings of 
Christ, and the glory that should follow." The proph- 
ets of the later ages had meant their representation of 
the expected Christ to be a repetition and amplifica- 
tion of the idea presented by Moses, and therefore 
they might properly be said to " testify beforehand the 
sufferings [or experiences] of Christ, and the glory 
that should follow," because these were the true im- 
port of the promise of Moses, and it was the promise 
of Moses which (distorted and incorrect as was in 
fact the image they gave of it) the prophets had de- 
signed to repeat. (Comp. Luke x. 24.) And much, 
in relation to the subject and to the " manner of time " 
of its occurrence, as they were ignorant of, this they 
knew, — " it was revealed " — it was obvious to them 

— that the hope of the Messiah's coming was not 
accomplished in their day, but remained to be accom- 
plished subsequently, and accordingly was accom- 
plished, as Peter says, in the time of those to whom 
he was writing. "Unto whom it was revealed that 
not unto themselves, but unto you [unto a future time, 

— unto your time, as it turns out] they did minister 
the things which are now reported unto you by them 
that have preached the Gospel unto you with the Holy 
Ghost sent down from heaven ; which things the angels 
desire to look into [things, so far from being subject 
to be comprehended by the old Jewish sages, with their 
imperfect hints derived from Moses, that still, even 
after the great fact of the Messiah's mission has taken 
place, they are matter for the scrutiny of higher intel- 
ligences]." 



I. 18, 19.] EIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 305 

I have founded part of the above remarks on the 
common translation, " the sufferings of Christ and the 
glory that should follow " (i. 11). But I doubt whether 
the Greek will any way bear this rendering. The 
literal sense of the words (ra eh Xpco-rbv iraO-r^ara) is, 
the sufferings to Christ ; that is, the sufferings down 
to Christ's time. Whose sufferings 1 Who did " the 
prophets " expect would " suffer " till the time of 
Christ's appearance, and then have suffering succeeded 
by " glory " % They expected precisely this respecting 
the nation to which they belonged. I propose, there- 
fore, instead of " the sufferings of Christ and the glory 
which should follow " (which is not a correct repre- 
sentation of Peter's words), to read, " the [national] 
sufferings till the Messiah's time, and the glory fated 
then to be disclosed," 

I. 15, 16. 

As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all man- 
ner of conversation ; because it is written, " Be ye holy, for 
I am holy." 

Here Peter simply casts his own exhortation into 
the form of a command recorded to have been anciently 
given by God (Lev. xi. 44), and fortifies his precept by 
a repetition of that command. 

I. 18, 19. 

Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and 
gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from 
your fathers ; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a 
lamb without blemish and without spot. 

They had been " redeemed " from a " vain conversa- 
tion " ; that is, they had been rescued from an irrelig- 
ious life. They had been rescued by the " blood of 
Christ," because Christ's death had been the needful 
26* 



306 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [1.23-25,11.4-10. 

attestation to that Gospel of his which was the instru- 
ment of their moral renovation. (Comp. John i. 29 ; 
1 Cor. vi. 19, 20 ; Tit. ii. 14.) His blood was « pre- 
cious," because it was the blood of one innocent as a 
lamb ; resembling, in his freedom from moral defect, 
the physical perfection of those victims, which the 
ritual required to be " without blemish." 

I. 23-25, II. 4-10. 

Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorrupti- 
ble, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth. For 
all flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of 
grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth 
away ; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And 
this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you. 

To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of 
men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively 
stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to 
offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. 
Because it is contained in the Scripture, " Behold, I lay in 
Zion a chief corner-stone, elect, precious ; and he that be- 
lieveth on him shall not be confounded." Unto you, there- 
fore, which believe, he is precious ; but unto them which be 
disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same 
is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and 
a rock of offence, even to them which stumble, being disobe- 
dient to the word : whereunto also they were appointed. But 
ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy na- 
tion, a peculiar people ; that ye should show forth the praises 
of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvel- 
lous light ; which in time past were not a people, but are now 
the people of God ; which had not obtained mercy, but now 
have obtained mercy. 

In these two passages, it is quite clear, that, to ex- 
press his own sentiments with the greater liveliness 
and effect, the Apostle does but cull sentences and ex- 
pressions from different parts of old Scripture, and 
transfer them from their original meaning, with free 



III. 10-12,14,15.] FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 307 

alterations to suit the purpose to which he applies them. 
(Comp. Is. xl. 6, xxviii. 16 ; Ps. cxviii. 22; Is. viii. 14; 
Jer. vi. 21 ; Exod. xix. 6; Deut. vii. 6, xiv. 2; Hos. 
ii. 23 ; also above, pp. 225 - 228.) 

II. 22, 24. 

Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth ; 

by whose stripes ye were healed. 

Here is another instance of precisely the same kind 
as the last two. The Apostle, in speaking of his 
Master, adopts language which had been employed 
in the Old Testament with a different application. 
(Is. liii. 9, 5 ; comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. III. pp. 252 
- 259.) No one can argue that, by merely applying to 
Jesus language borrowed from an ancient writer, Peter 
meant to imply that, in using that language, that 
writer had described Jesus, unless he is prepared to 
maintain that, when the same Apostle (1 Peter ii. 9, 10) 
calls " the strangers scattered throughout Pontus," &c. 
(ibid. i. 1) "a royal priesthood," and "a people which 
had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy," 
those " strangers " were the persons whom Moses and 
Hosea had designated when they first used those ex- 
pressions. 

The interpretation of this passage of Peter's Epistle 
is the more important, as it contains the only reference 
in the Epistles of the New Testament to what has been 
considered the most striking prediction of Jesus in the 
Old. (See above, p. 64.) 

III. 10-12, 14,15. 

He that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his 
tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile ; let 
him eschew evil, and do good ; let him seek peace and ensue 
it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his 



308 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [HI. 18-20. 

ears are open unto their prayers ; but the face of the Lord is 

against them that do evil And be not afraid of their 

terror, neither be troubled ; but sanctify the Lord God in 
your hearts. 

Here again the Apostle does but clothe his senti- 
ments and injunctions in words of old Scripture, as a 
preacher of the present day would do. (Comp. Ps. 
xxxiv. 12-16; Is. viii. 12, 13.) 

III. 18-20. 

Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, 
that he might bring us to God ; being put to death in the flesh, 
but quickened by the Spirit ; by which also he went and 
preached unto the spirits in prison ; which sometime were 
disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited in the 
days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, 
that is, eight souls, were saved by water. 

Our English translation of these verses I take to 
convey an altogether erroneous idea. As they stand 
in the printed editions of the Greek, the sentence is 
very incompact, and its import, accordingly, obscure. 
It has probably suffered violence in transcription, — 
a fact which is indicated by some variety of reading in 
the manuscripts. Taking the text as it is printed, by 
" the spirits in prison (lv foXa/cy), which sometime were 
disobedient," I understand the disobedient spirits once 
imprisoned in the bondage of iniquity (comp. Isaiah xlii. 
7), or (preferably) the spirits, once disobedient, now 
in safety. (Comp. e<f>v\a^€, " saved," 2 Pet. ii. 5.) For 
" when the long-suffering of God waited," I propose, 
by an easy and perfectly allowable change (o, re for ore), 
to read " which also the long-suffering of God awaited." 
We shall then understand the Apostle as saying, that 
Christ, by that holy spirit which dwelt in him, and 
which was but quickened into higher life when he 
died, had gone forth [during his earthly ministry] and 



IV. 8.] FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER. 309 

preached to benighted minds, once disobedient, now 
saved ; which also [that is, the like of which, — preach- 
ing efficacious to men's salvation] God's long-suffering 
mercy was awaiting, all the time that, in Noah's days, 
that ark was in preparation, wherein eventually eight 
persons were saved in the flood of water ; which also 
[that is, water, applied in baptism] doth also now save 
us, &c. 

But this explanation of a difficult passage, right or 
wrong, is something aside from my purpose. The only 
question presented by it, in connection with the argu- 
ment I now am treating, is, whether Peter could thus 
refer to Noah and his ark, unless he believed the ac- 
count of them in Genesis to be historically true. And 
upon this point I have nothing to add to what I have 
already said in different places, of the perfect rhetori- 
cal and logical legitimacy of allusions of this kind to 
fabulous narrations. (Comp. above, pp. 80, 113, 297.) 
In saying that, in the ministry of Jesus, God's long- 
suffering mercy waited for men to betake themselves 
to the ark of refuge, just as he put off the flood all 
the time that the ark was building, Peter presented a 
lively image to readers to whom the narrative of that 
proceeding was familiar ; but by no recognized rules of 
the interpretation of language can he be understood 
to vouch for the narrative as true. 

IV. 8. 

Above all things have fervent charity among yourselves \ for 
charity shall cover the multitude of sins. 

In the original use of the words here quoted, their 
meaning appears from the antithesis in the context 
(Prov. x. 12) to have been, that charity conceals a 
neighbor's faults. It is not clear, nor is it material, 
whether the Apostle meant to repeat them in this 



310 NOTES ON PASSAGES, &o. [IV. 18, V. 5. 

sense, or with the different import that charity is a virtue 
so excellent that it will atone for, and, as it were, blot 
out, faults in its possessor. 

IV. 18, V. 5. 

If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and 

the sinner appear ? 
God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. 

Quotations from the Book of Proverbs (xi. 31, iii. 
34, the former, however, not from the Hebrew, but 
from the Septuagint) are here naturally introduced, 
after the manner common with all writers. 



SECTION XII. 

FIKST EPISTLE OF JOHN. 



III. 11, 12. 

We should love one another ; not as Cain, who was of that 
wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he 
him ? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's 
righteous. 

Am I asked, whether St. John, exhorting his disci- 
ples to mutual love, could refer to the story of Cain 
(Gen. iv. 8) unless he regarded it as true history I I 
ask in return, whether I am precluded from advising 
a young friend to adopt for himself the choice of Her- 
cules, unless I am ready to maintain the truth of the 
story in the Memorabilia ; or whether I may not 
enforce my exhortation to join effort to prayer, by re- 
ferring to the tale of Hercules and the Wagoner, 
without making myself responsible for the existence 
of Hercules and the wagoner as real persons. (See 
above, pp. 80, 113, 297, 309 ; also, below, p. 341.) 



PART III. 
BOOKS OF DISPUTED AUTHENTICITY. 

SECTION I. 
EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 

The New Testament books on which I have re- 
marked, with others which contain no reference to the 
Old Testament calling for comment (viz. the Epis- 
tles to the Philippians and to Philemon, and the 
First Epistle to the Thessalonians), complete the list 
of those whose authenticity was unquestioned in the 
primitive Church (6/jLo\oyovfieva). The others found 
in the received collection were anciently called spun- 
ous or disputed (yoOa or azm\e<yo/4eW). These names 
are taken from Eusebius, who states the distinction in 
different places. (" Hist. Eccles.," Lib. II. Cap. 23, 
III. 3, 25, 31, VI. 20.) 

In my remarks on the acknowledged books, it has 
been my aim to show, that in no case presented by them 
does Jesus, or any Apostle or Evangelist, attribute to 
the Old Testament, or to any passage in it, any sense 
different from that which in my work on the Old Tes- 
tament I have set forth as the true one. The case 
stands thus. Confining our attention to the Old 
Testament, and applying to it the established rules for 
interpreting language, we conclude that it, and its 
several parts, convey such and such a meaning. But 
the question arises, whether Jesus and his Apostles 
have ascribed to it any meaning different from this, on 



312 NOTES ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

any of the numerous occasions on which they have 
referred to it. I am persuaded that they have not; 
and this opinion I have endeavored to maintain in the 
comments contained in the previous pages of this 
volume. 

But I cannot say the same of the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. That composition contains 
numerous allegorical interpretations of the Old Testa- 
ment ; interpretations, in my opinion, altogether in- 
correct, and proceeding on an exegetical theory inde- 
fensible, unsound, and delusive. (See " Lectures," &c., 
Vol. II. pp. 333 - 352.) 

This fact would exceedingly perplex me, if I sup- 
posed the Epistle to the Hebrews to be the work of 
Paul, or of some other divinely authorized expounder 
of the Christian religion. But I do not so suppose. 
The common notion of its having been written by 
Paul, I take to be not only unsupported by evidence, 
but to be opposed by a convincing weight of evidence. 
To present an outline of the argument on this subject 
is all that is consistent with my limits or my plan. 

The evidence in respect to the authorship of this 
book, as of others, is of two kinds ; external and 
internal. 

Under the head of the external evidence, champions 
of the Pauline origin of the work have found a topic 
of argument in another book of the New Testament 
collection. A recent writer says : " The first evidence 
to be adduced on this subject, though of a nature 
somewhat indirect and uncertain, is worthy of our 
close attention, on the ground of its antiquity and au- 
thority. It is the testimony of the Apostle Peter, who, 
in his Second Epistle (iii. 14-16), writes as follows: 
' Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such 
things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 313 

peacej without spot, and blameless. And account that 
the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation; even as 
our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom 
given unto him, hath written unto you ; as also in all 
his Epistles, speaking in them of these things ; in 
which are some things hard to be understood, which 
they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do 
also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.' " 
(Gurney's " Canonical Authority of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews." *) And he proceeds to argue, (1.) that this 
Epistle was addressed to the same persons to whom 
Paul had, on some occasion, written (iii. 15), and that it 
was addressed to Jewish Christians only (iii. 1 ; comp. 
1 Pet. i. 1), as no letter of Paul was, unless he wrote 
the Epistle to the Hebrews ; (2.) that the reference in 
the context (2 Pet. iii. 10-13) must be to the Epistle 
to the Hebrews (ix. 27, 28, x. 19-37, xii. 1, 14, 15, 
25-29). 

No part of this argument is good. . 

1. The Second Epistle of Peter (so called) cannot 
be shown to contain " testimony of the Apostle Peter." 
It was probably not written by that Apostle. (See 
below, p. 334.) Still it appears to have been a com- 
position of the first century, and as such would have 
weight in relation to the authorship of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, provided it in fact referred to that work. 

2. The Second Epistle of Peter purports to have been 
written (2 Pet. iii. 1 ; comp. 1 Pet. i. 1), if to any Jew- 
ish Christians, to those dispersed through Asia Minor, 
whereas even the author of the argument which I am 
refuting allows that the Epistle to the Hebrews " was 
probably addressed to the Jewish Christians of Pales- 
tine." The reasoning, therefore, as far as it is founded 

* The copy of this tract which I use is in the second volume (p. 409 et 
seq.) of the Andover " Biblical Repository." 

27 



314 NOTES ON THE AUTHOESHIP OF 

on the language, " even as our beloved brother Paul 
also hath written unto you" falls to the ground. 

3. It is not necessary to suppose that the reference in 
the Second Epistle of Peter was to any epistle of Paul 
now extant. It is by no means probable that all the 
letters of Paul have survived the chances of time. 
But supposing otherwise, the reference in question 
does not so naturally point to any part of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, as to one or more of Paul's acknowl- 
edged Epistles ; as that to the Romans (ii. 4-10), ad- 
dressed mainly to Jewish Christians, or that to the Gala- 
tians (v. 13-26, vi. 9), or that to the Ephesians (v. 27), 
both addressed to Christians (the former to Jewish 
Christians) of Asia Minor; or (if the reference be 
thought to be from the whole passage which treats of 
a consummation of earthly things, 2 Pet. iii. 8-14) 
to the Eirst Epistle to the Corinthians (xv. 12-58), 
or the Epistles to the Thessalonians (1 Thes. iv. 13- 
v. 3; 2 Thes. i. 6-10). 

Such reasoning as. this is easily dismissed. The most 
important testimony to be appealed to for the Pau- 
line origin of the Epistle, is that of the eminent Greek 
Father, Clement of Alexandria. Eusebius (" Hist. 
Eccles.," Lib. VI. Cap. 14), speaking of a work of 
Clement, extant in his day, but now lost, says : " The 
Epistle to the Hebrews he [Clement] asserts was writ- 
ten by Paul to the Hebrews, in the Hebrew tongue ; 
but that Luke carefully translated it, and published 
it among the Greeks. Whence also one finds the 
same character of style and of phraseology in the 
Epistle as in the Acts. But it is probable that the 
title Paul the Apostle was not prefixed to it ; for, as 
he wrote to the Hebrews, who had conceived preju- 
dices against him and suspected him, he wisely guards 
against diverting them from the perusal by giving his 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 315 

name. A little after this, he [Clement] remarks : 
c But now, as the blessed presbyter used to say, since 
the Lord, who was the Apostle of the Almighty, was 
sent to the Hebrews, Paul, by reason of his inferiority, 
as if sent to the Gentiles, did not entitle himself an 
Apostle to the Hebrews, both out of reverence to the 
Lord, and because he wrote of his abundance to the 
Hebrews, as a herald and Apostle of the Gentiles.' " 

Clement flourished at the close of the second cen- 
tury of our era. He has been supposed, in the last 
passage quoted from him by Eusebius, to have ma- 
terially fortified his own testimony by declaring that 
his opinion concerning the origin of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews was also held by " the blessed presbyter," or 
elder. By this title he sometimes designates Pan- 
tsenus, his predecessor as head of the Alexandrian 
school, and is understood to do so in this place. I 
think it highly probable that such is the fact. But 
I see no evidence (though every writer whom I have 
consulted makes the admission) that Clement meant to 
represent " the blessed elder " as referring to the Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews in any way whatever. The ques- 
tion treated by " the blessed elder " appears to have 
been simply, why Paul, a descendant from the Jewish 
patriarchs, " a Hebrew of the Hebrews," who loved so 
well his " kinsmen according to the flesh," in all that 
he had written to expose errors incident to their pride 
of parentage, never called himself " the Apostle to the 
Hebrews," but always " an Apostle of the Gentiles." 
(Comp. 1 Tim. ii. 7 ; 2 Tim. i. 11.) It is by no means 
clear that the last clause, containing the reference to 
what Paul " wrote of his abundance to the Hebrews," 
is to be comprised within what Clement ascribed to 
" the blessed elder." 

Was Clement's alleged belief in the Pauline origin 



316 NOTES ON THE AUTHOESHIP OE 

of this Epistle an opinion founded on evidence, better 
or worse ] Was it an opinion of any kind, in the true 
sense of that word % or was it only an idea taken up 
from unexamined report % * or was it only a guess % 
Clement was a credulous man, and his fondness for 
allegorical interpretations (see " Lectures," &c, Vol. 
II. p. 338) would have especially disposed him to value 
this work, which abounds in them, and to attribute to 
it an Apostolic authorship. 

Further | that Clement was little acquainted with 
its history, appears from this, that he calls it a trans- 
lation from the Hebrew, which it almost certainly was 
not. There are paronomasia, which, being founded 
on forms of Greek words, strongly indicate a Greek 
origin. (Comp. Heb. v. 8, 14, vii. 7, ix. 10, xi. 37, 
xiii. 14.) There are reasonings founded on the Greek 
of the Septuagint version, where that text is erro- 
neous. (Heb. i. 6, comp. Deut. xxxii. 43; Heb. x. 5, 
comp. Ps. xl. 6.) To adduce no other argument to 
this point, there is a passage (ix. 15-18) the whole 
structure of which depends on a twofold meaning of 
the Greek word (SiaOrjKr)^ which signifies both covenant 
and testament. There is no equivalent word in He- 
brew, and the passage could not be composed in that 
language. Nor is this reasoning rebutted by saying 
that there is such a word in Syriac, and that the Syriac 
may have been the Hebrew which Clement meant. 
For that Syriac word is merely the Greek (ScaOrj/cr)) in 
Syriac letters, adopted and transferred into the Syriac 
version of the Bible as untranslatable, just as the au- 

* Le Clerc says of Clement (" Biblioth. Univers.," Tom. X. p. 231) : 
"The extensive reading of this learned man had not formed his taste ; for 
it is not necessary to be much of a connoisseur to perceive that what he has 
cited as written by the Apostles Peter and Paul neither bears the stamp of 
their style, nor conforms to their doctrines." 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 317 

thors of our version have adopted and Anglicized the 
Hebrew Messiah, and the Greek Christ, or as the 
Douay translators have used the Hebrew Pasch, for 
what we call the Passover. Michaelis says (" Intro- 
duction," Chap. XXIV. § 12) that the Syriac word is 
" used both in the sense of covenant and that of testa- 
ment, as Castell and Schaaf have clearly shown from 
many passages of the Syriac version." But, in point 
of fact, these lexicographers have produced no instance 
of the latter signification, except from the version of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews.* 

Origen, Clement's pupil and successor at Alexandria, 
and the most learned man of Christian antiquity, is 
commonly referred to as an authority for the Pauline 
origin of this Epistle. He might well be biased in 
its favor, for he was even more of an allegorical inter- 
preter than his master. (" Lectures," &c, Vol. II. p. 
339.) But, in point of fact, Eusebius's statement of 
Origen's opinion on the subject is as follows : — 

" Respecting the Epistle to the Hebrews, he [Ori- 
gen], in his homilies thereupon, expresses himself thus: 
that ' the complexion of the style of the Epistle enti- 

* A notable specimen of the carelessness with which subjects of this 
nature are often treated appears in the tract of Gurney, quoted above, " On 
the Canonical Authority of the Epistle to the Hebrews." He says : " Pan- 
tsenus was succeeded in the school of Alexandria by Clement (A. D. 192), 
whose testimony to the Pauline origin of this Epistle is also preserved by 
Eusebius, and is quite explicit." And for this " quite explicit " testimony 
of Clement of Alexandria, he refers to a passage of Eusebius (Lib. III. 
Cap. 38) which does not treat of Clement of Alexandria at all, but of Clem- 
ent of Rome. And Eusebius does not quote or allege any opinion of this 
Father upon the subject, but merely reasons in his own behalf, from certain 
resemblances of language between one of the Epistles ascribed to Clement 
and the Epistle to the Hebrews, " that this work is by no means a late pro- 
duction ; whence it is probable that it was also numbered with the other 
writings of the Apostles ; for, as Paul had addressed the Hebrews in the 
language of his country, some say that the Evangelist Luke, others that 
Clement, translated the Epistle." 

27 * 



318 NOTES ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

tied To the Hebreivs, does not exhibit that rudeness 
which belongs to the Apostle, who acknowledges him- 
self to be unskilful in speech, that is, in style. (2 Cor. 
x. 10.) But that the Epistle is composed in somewhat 
pure Greek, every one capable of discerning differences 
in style will own.' And again, « that the thoughts of 
the Epistle are admirable, and not inferior to those of 
the Apostle's acknowledged writings, this too would 
be admitted as true by any one familiar with those 
writings.' Afterwards Origen says further : ' To give 
my own opinion, I would say that the thoughts are 
the Apostle's, but the diction and. composition those of 
some one who recorded the Apostle's discourses, and, 
as it were, made notes of what the teacher uttered. 
If, then, any church holds this Epistle to be Paul's, let 
it be commended for so doing ; for it was not without 
cause that the ancient men delivered it as Paul's. But 
the truth as to who wrote the Epistle [t/? Be 6 ypa^a^ 
ttjv eiricTTokriv'], God knows. Accounts have reached us 
from some who say that Clement, Bishop of Rome, 
wrote the Epistle, and others who say it was written 
by Luke, the same ivho wrote [o ypa-v/ra?] the Gospel 
and the Acts.' " (Euseb., " Hist. Eccles.," Lib. VI. 
Cap. 25.) 

If this is testimony to Paul's being the author of 
this Epistle, in any proper sense of those words, what 
would be testimony against it % Origen liked the sen- 
timents of the Epistle. As was natural for him, fond 
of allegorical interpretation as he was, he thought 
them admirable, and eminently worthy of Paul. This 
favorable prepossession of his is no help to us in deter- 
mining the actual origin of the composition, but it 
inclined him to lay stress on the representation of 
those ancient men (ol apyaiot avhpes, perhaps Pantsenus 
and Clement, his predecessors at Alexandria) who had 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 319 

somehow connected the Epistle with Paul's name, and 
to consider any church which received it as his, as 
worthy of commendation. Still, Origen was a compe- 
tent judge of composition. He discerned the differ- 
ences in Greek style, and he was familiar with the 
style of Paul ; and being so, he saw that Paul could 
not have been, in the common and pertinent sense of the 
words, the writer of this treatise. Whether the writer 
was Clement of Rome, or Luke who ivrote the Gospel 
and the Acts, or some one else, " God knew." But the 
style was so different from the well-known style of 
Paul as to forbid the idea of its having proceeded from 
him in any other sense than as being the work of some 
one who had adopted that Apostle's thoughts, and set 
them down in his own language. In other words, 
Origen had no evidence that Paul was the writer of 
the Epistle ; he saw, from its style, that Paul could 
not have been its writer • and the rest of his comment 
upon the subject is but the speculation of a prejudiced 
man, and destitute of critical value. I may add, that 
Origen manifestly understood the Epistle, in Greek, to 
be in his hands in its original form, and not in a 
translation from the Hebrew ; and his difference of 
opinion, in this respect, from his master Clement, shows 
how little its history was known. Origen and Clement 
both saw that the Greek style was not Paul's, and to 
connect it with Paul's name, notwithstanding this ma- 
terial fact, they resorted to different hypotheses. One 
suggested that it was a translation by Luke from an 
original by Paul ; the other, that it was a sort of 
commentary, made up from his oral discourses. 

The homily from which the extract just remarked 
upon was made by Eusebius, was written when Origen 
was more than sixty years of age, and may be supposed 
to express the result of his most mature reflections on 



320 NOTES ON THE AUTHORSHIP OE 

the subject. Lardner suggests (" Credibility," &c, 
Chap. XXXVIII. § 10 (8)) that it may be the fulfil- 
ment of a purpose referred to in a letter several years 
before, wherein, after quoting from the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, he says (" Opp.," Tom. I. p. 20, edit. La Rue): 
" Possibly some one, pressed with this reasoning, will 
take refuge in the opinion of those who reject this 
Epistle as not written by Paul ; for whom we need 
to prepare another argument to show that it was 
Paul's." At any rate, we do well to recur to this full 
exposition of his opinion as to the sense in which the 
Epistle could be ascribed to Paul, when we find him, 
as we do in different places, quoting from it as a work 
of that Apostle. 

Dionysius, who became Bishop of Alexandria in the 
year 247 or 248, naturally succeeded to that partiality 
to the Epistle to the Hebrews which had been enter- 
tained by his eminent predecessors in that city. Eu- 
sebius (" Hist. Eccles.," Lib. VI. Cap. 41) quotes him 
as having written thus : " The brethren withdrew and 
gave way, and, like those whom Paul commends, ' took 
joyfully the spoiling of their goods.' " The allusion 
appears to be to Heb. x. 34. 

Theognostus, who flourished about A. D. 280, is one 
of the Greek Fathers who have been supposed to 
vouch for the Pauline origin of this composition. But 
I do not find that he has given any opinion on the 
subject. His supposed testimony is contained in the 
following words of Athanasius : " They both [Athana- 
sius is speaking of Origen and Theognostus] treat this 
subject, saying that this is the blasphemy against the 
Holy Ghost, when they who have been favored with 
the gift of the Holy Spirit in baptism return to sin ; 
therefore, say they, such shall receive no remission, 
agreeably to what Paul also says in the Epistle to the 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 321 

Hebrews : ' For it is impossible for those who were 
once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, 
and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have 
tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the 
world to come, if they fall away, to renew them again 
unto repentance.' (Heb. vi. 4 - 6.) This they alike 
say." (St. Athanas. " Opp.," Epist. IV. ad Serapion. 
§ 9.) It is not improbable that the comment, " ac- 
cording to what Paul also says," &c., is Athanasius's 
own remark, and not part of his quotation from The- 
ognostus, which quotation ends with the words, " such 
receive no remission." The opinion of Athanasius, in 
the fourth century, concerning the authorship of this 
Epistle, is of much less consequence than the opin- 
ion of Theognostus in the third. 

Methodius, a few years later than Theognostus, is 
referred to, to the same effect. He has frequently used 
language resembling that of the Epistle to the He- 
brews ; but this of course he might do, to the extent 
even of showing that he was acquainted with that 
work, and still there would be no evidence respecting 
his opinion as to its author. In one piece of his, this 
language occurs : "Ye will obtain unspeakable renown, 
if ye shall overcome, and seize the seven crowns, for 
the sake of which the race and combat is set before 
us, according to the master, Paul." Here has been 
thought to be a reference to an expression in the Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews (xii. 1). But the allusion may 
equally well be to the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians 
(vi. 12 et seq.; comp. 1 Cor. ix. 24). At all events, it 
is too vague to be the foundation of any argument. 
Another piece ascribed to Methodius, called the " Hom- 
ily concerning Simeon and Anna," contains the follow- 
ing comment : " God took on him the seed of Abra- 
ham, according to the most divine Paul." (Comp. Heb. 



322 NOTES ON THE AUTHOESHIP OF 

ii. 16.) But the treatise is probably spurious, and from 
a later hand. Both the works cited are extant, but 
not within my reach. I quote them from Lardner. 
(" Credibility," &c, Chap. LVII. § 8.) 

A work ascribed to Archelaus, who lived about the 
same time, uses language, in two places, resembling 
language found in the Epistle to the Hebrews. But 
such a fact has no bearing on the question in hand. 
There is no mention of the Epistle, nor of Paul in 
connection with it. And the authorship and date of 
the work itself are very doubtful. (Lardner, " Credi- 
bility," &c, Chap. LXII.) 

Some of the Fathers, in controversy with the Ma- 
nichees, quoted this Epistle, from which it has been 
inferred that the Manichees regarded it as, in some 
sort, a work of authority. (Ibid. Chap. LXIII. § 6 
(4.)) But whether as a composition of Paul or not, 
is a question which this fact leaves altogether un- 
touched. 

Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, in the beginning 
of the fourth century, ascribed this Epistle to Paul. 
(Socrat. " Hist. Eccles.," Lib. I. Cap. vi. p. 13 ; The- 
odor. " Hist. Eccles., Lib. I. Cap. iv. p. 14.) So did 
Maximin, the Arian, about the same time. (St. 
Augustin. " Opp.," Tom. VI. p. 694, edit. Basil.) But 
Theodoret says, that those afflicted with Arianism 
" rejected it, and judged it to be spurious " (" Opp.," 
Tom. III. p. 393, edit. Paris.); and Epiphanius tes- 
tifies to the same effect : " They reject the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, saying that it is not the Apostle's." 
(Epiph. « Heeres." LXIX. Cap. 37.) 

If the testimony of the Greek Fathers for a Pauline 
origin of this Epistle is defective and inadequate, that 
of the Latin Fathers is altogether in the opposite di- 
rection. Lardner says of them (" Supplement," &c, 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBEEWS. 323 

Chap. XII. § 14 (3)): "Concerning the Latin writers, 
it is obvious to remark, that this Epistle is not ex- 
pressly quoted as Paul's, by any of them, in the first 
three centuries." 

Our two great authorities for the authorship of the 
New Testament books, besides Clement of Alexandria, 
are his contemporaries, Ireneeus of Lyons, and Tertul- 
lian of Carthage. Tertullian wrote in Latin. The 
work of Irenseus was composed in Greek, but, except 
some quotations by the Greek Fathers, is now extant 
only in a Latin translation. 

Irenseus very frequently quotes the acknowledged 
Epistles of Paul, but no intimation has been found in 
his writings of his considering the Epistle to the He- 
brews as being Paul's work, or of its being so consid- 
ered by Christians in or before his time. 

Tertullian once quotes the Epistle, but expressly 
ascribes it to Barnabas. " There is an Epistle of Bar- 
nabas," he says, " inscribed to the Hebrews " (" De 
Pudicit." Cap. XX.) • and its identity with the work 
under our consideration is proved by the passage which 
he goes on to cite (Heb. vi. 1, 4-8). The connection 
in which he refers to the work is such as would have 
biased him in favor of quoting it as Paul's, if he had 
supposed himself to have any authority for so doing. 
Tertullian's testimony against its Pauline origin much 
more than balances that of Clement in its favor, en- 
cumbered as the latter is by Clement's perception of 
the want of similarity in the style to that of Paul's 
acknowledged writings. And when Clement's testi- 
mony is rebutted, what remains of the evidence on 
that side is of little consideration. 

The Latin Father, Caius, of Pome, is assigned to 
the year 210, some twenty years before Origen. Of 
three or four books written by him, only some frag- 



324 NOTES ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

ments remain. Our information respecting their con- 
tents is chiefly through statements of Eusebius, Je- 
rome, and Photius. Eusebius says (" Hist. Eccles.," 

Lib. VI. Cap. 20) : " Caius, a most eloquent man, 

makes mention of but thirteen Epistles of the holy 
Apostle, not reckoning that to the Hebrews with the 
rest ; and, indeed, to this very time [A. D. circ. 320], 
by some of the Romans, this Epistle is not thought to 
be the Apostle's." Jerome's testimony is : " Reckoning 
up only thirteen Epistles of Paul, he [Caius] says the 
fourteenth, which is inscribed to the Hebrews, is not 
his ; and with the Romans, to this day, it is not looked 
upon as Paul's." (" De Vir. Illus.," Cap. LIX.) And 
that of Photius : " He [Caius] enumerates only thirteen 
Epistles of Paul, not reckoning that to the Hebrews." 
(" Biblioth.," p. 38, edit. Schott.) 

Of St. Hippolytus, ten years later, Photius says that 
he was a disciple of Irenaeus, and adds : " Neverthe- 
less, he advances some things which are not right ; 
especially, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is not the 
Apostle Paul's." (Ibid. p. 302.) 

Cyprian of Carthage, in the middle of the third 
century, is a very important authority, for one not 
among the earliest, both on account of the extent of 
his writings, and the frequency of his Scriptural quo- 
tations. There are quotations in Cyprian's works from 
every Epistle of Paul except the short one to Phile- 
mon. But he has nowhere quoted from, or alluded 
to, the Epistle to the Hebrews. He further repeatedly 
makes the remark, that Paul had addressed Epistles to 
" seven churches " (" Testimon.," Lib. I. Cap. 20 ; " De 
Exhort. Mart.," Cap. 11); which number is made up 
by the churches of Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, 
Philippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica. It would have 
been eight, had Cyprian supposed Paul to have written 
to the Hebrews. 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 325 

Perhaps Lactantius (" Instit," Lib. IV. Capp. 13, 14, 
20, 22) received the Epistle to the Hebrews as a work 
of the Apostle Paul. But he belongs to the beginning 
of the fourth century ; a time too late for his opin- 
ion to have any original authority. And the Arnobius 
who is quoted to the same effect was not his contem- 
porary, but another writer of the same name who lived 
in the latter part of the fifth century. (Lardner, " Cred- 
ibility," Chap. LXIV. § 1.) 

The earliest translation of the New Testament was 
that into the Syriac language, called the Syriac Peschito, 
or exact. In the collection of books contained in this 
version, the Epistle to the Hebrews was not originally 
included, though at a later period a Syriac version of 
that book was inserted. This fact cannot be explained 
consistently with the supposition, that the persons by 
and for whom the version in question was made re- 
garded the Epistle to the Hebrews as a work of Paul. 

If the believers in the Pauline origin of this Epistle 
in the third and fourth centuries had been much more 
numerous than they were, still we are carefully to re- 
member that the question is not of a nature to be 
settled by a mere counting of votes. What we con- 
sult later writers for, is simply their testimony to the 
established opinion of the Church in the first two cen- 
turies. What Tertullian, Irenseus, Caius, Hippolytus, 
and others at the end of the second century, did not 
know respecting the canonical authority of a book, it 
is impossible that Eusebius or Jerome should have 
known afterwards. What we seek to learn respecting 
a book of the New Testament is, whether it had un- 
disputed acceptance in the Church at the earliest pe- 
riod at which we can obtain evidence upon the subject. 
If it had not such acceptance at that time, no opinion 
of after-times can cure that fatal flaw in its claim. 
28 



326 NOTES ON THE AUTHOESHIP OF 

Had the work been really Paul's, it would be ex- 
tremely difficult to explain how its true authorship 
should have ever been doubted in any quarter. It 
is a long composition, of great elaborateness, and, con- 
sidered as from Paul's hand, would have been a work 
of singular curiosity and importance, particularly as 
establishing, on the great Apostle's authority, an ex- 
tremely peculiar system of interpretation of the Old 
Testament. Had it been Paul's, it seems that it would 
have been sure to attract an attention which would 
for ever have precluded all doubt of its being so. 

On the other hand, it is easy to explain how, not 
being Paul's work, it should have come, in some quar- 
ters, to be ascribed to him. Its affluence of Rabbini- 
cal learning would suggest a reference of it to the 
eminent pupil of Gamaliel ; and those converts from 
Judaism with whom lingered an attachment to the 
allegorical method of interpreting their ancient Scrip- 
tures, and those Gentile recruits, who, in their philo- 
sophical schools, had been largely exercised in this 
kind of trifling, would delight in any pretence for sus- 
taining themselves by the authority of such a name. 
The concluding salutations, and the reference to Tim- 
othy (Heb. xiii. 23 - 25), bear a resemblance to pas- 
sages in Paul's acknowledged writings, which would 
naturally suggest his name to a person investigating 
the authorship of an anonymous composition. 

Proceeding from the external to the internal evi- 
dence, we find occasion for the following remarks : — 

1. There are several favorite forms of language fre- 
quently used by Paul in his acknowledged Epistles, 
but never once occurring in the Epistle to the He- 
brews, where the connection equally calls for their use. 
The phrase " in Christ " (lv Xpiarm), commonly used 
for the condition of a Christian believer, is found in 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 327 

Paul's acknowledged Epistles seventy-five times ; the 
" Lord Jesus Christ " (6 icvpios 'I^o-ovs X^oro?), eighty- 
three times ; " the Gospel " (to evayyeXiov), fifty-nine 
times. The Epistle to the Hebrews does not present 
a single instance of either. In the acknowledged 
Epistles, Paul calls God by the title of our " Father " 
thirty-six times. The Epistle to the Hebrews never 
refers to him by this title, but it once (xii. 9) gives him 
the peculiar designation of " the Father of spirits," 
unknown to the acknowledged Epistles. In all these 
Epistles, except that to Philemon, is found the title 
"Apostle," indicative of an authorized messenger of 
Jesus. The Epistle to the Hebrews presents but one 
instance of the use of the word (iif. 1), and that is in 
an application to Jesus himself, a use which it never 
once has in the other Epistles. In two cases, the Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews uses the word church (ifCKkrjcrla) ; 
but in one of them (ii. 12 ; comp. Ps. xxii. 22) it re- 
fers, in a quotation from a Psalm, to the congregation 
of the Jews, and in the other (xii. 23), to the society 
of the blessed in a future state ; while it presents no 
instance of that application of the name, so common 
in the Epistles of Paul, to the community of Christian 
believers. 

2. Nothing is more remarkable in the acknowledged 
writings of St. Paul, than the prominence with which 
he places himself before the reader. His argument 
always presents the hue of his own mind. His per- 
sonal peculiarities appear upon his page. No writer 
was ever more spontaneous, more individual and self- 
demonstrative. From the aspects of the writer one 
could draw the portraiture of the man. The Epistle 
to the Hebrews, cold, abstract, simply argumentative, 
has a character singularly the reverse of all this. An 
algebraic demonstration would present as much indi- 
cation of its author. 



328 NOTES ON THE AUTHOKSHIP OF 

3. The rhetoric of the Epistle to the Hebrews is 
altogether unlike that of the acknowledged Epistles, 
in its general tone and spirit. From the force of his 
character, his understanding, and his feelings, Paul 
wrote with great vigor, but never with any appearance 
of study or art. He pours forth without premedita- 
tion such a sweeping torrent of burning thoughts and 
words, that it is often extremely difficult to discern his 
method. Constantly a collateral view strikes him, and 
he rushes off in a parenthesis, of w 7 hich he is at no 
pains to mark the end, nor to point out to the reader 
where he resumes the thread of discourse. His sen- 
tences are often involved ; his expressions harsh ; his 
constructions bold, to the very limits of license in 
style. Entirely the opposite of all this, the Epistle to 
the Hebrews is uniformly methodical, elaborate, and 
ornate. The writer was evidently a person who care- 
fully affected the rhetorician. To an almost weari- 
some degree, he displays himself as an artist and a 
precisian in style. 

4. He deals throughout in a description of argu- 
ment, which Paul in no one instance uses in his ac- 
knowledged works. From first to last, he presents 
allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament. They 
make the staple of his speculations. They mark the 
peculiar training of his mind, and a distinctive char- 
acter of his convictions and his tastes. No person 
who could write as he did in this particular, could 
possibly have written as Paul has done in his acknowl- 
edged Epistles, with an absolute omission of all such 
matter. For I repeat, that, not only has not Paul gen- 
erally written in this strain, as the author of the Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews could not have failed to do, but he 
has nowhere presented so much as a single specimen 
of that kind of writing. (See above, pp. 286, 292, 



THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 329 

and comp. " Lectures," &c., Vol. II. pp. 333 - 335.) 
It is impossible, I conceive, to explain this fact con- 
sistently with the idea that the Epistle to the Hebrews 
was his work. 

5. There is, finally, a more general view of the trea- 
tise, as to the bearing and force of which every reader 
must answer for himself. It relates to what is matter 
not for argument, but for intuition. Different persons 
have different styles in composition, as they have differ- 
ent countenances, different voices, and a different chi- 
rography. We distinguish different styles as we do 
different handwritings, — with perfect assurance for 
ourselves, and yet on grounds which we cannot explain 
or vindicate to another mind. If I am familiar with 
Gibbon's rhetoric, it is in vain for any one to place 
before me a chapter of Hume's History, and tell me 
that Gibbon wrote it. I know better, as soon as I look 
at it. From the first sentences I read, I see that the 
thing could not be. So of Paul's acknowledged Epis- 
tles, as compared with the Epistle to the Hebrews. I 
cannot speak for others, nor argue with others, if they 
dissent from me ; — as to intuitions, every one is a 
rule to himself, and no man can correct or explain 
alleged opposite convictions on the part of any other 
man. But for myself, I need only a little inspection, 
to be completely and indisputably satisfied that the 
Epistle to the Hebrews did not proceed from the 
same pen with the thirteen Epistles of Paul. The 
first known advocate of the Pauline origin of the 
former, Clement of Alexandria, saw this difficulty, as 
it has been seen in later times, and was fain to escape 
from it by the supposition that the work was composed 
by Paul in Hebrew, and translated by another hand 
into Greek. This supposition we have seen to be with- 
out probability ; had it been correct, it would not have 
28 * 



330 NOTES ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF 

removed the difficulty felt by Clement ; that difficulty 
remains in its unabated and insuperable force. 

In denying that the composition can have proceeded 
from St. Paul, we imply no imputation whatever upon 
its author. He has nowhere assumed that Apostle's 
name. He has rather implied (ii. 3, 4) that he was one 
of those who had received the Gospel at second-hand 
from those endowed with miraculous powers to publish 
it. It is an ancient work, and, however destitute of 
Apostolical authority, and however radically erroneous 
in its scheme of Old Testament interpretation, there 
is no reason to doubt that it was written by an honest 
man, and for an honest purpose. 

I have thus briefly explained why I follow some of 
the foremost champions of orthodoxy, — including the 
greatest names among the Reformers, Luther, Calvin, 
Erasmus, Melancthon, Beza, and others, — in denying 
that the Epistle to the Hebrews was a work of the 
Apostle Paul. But if not written by that Apostle, it 
is simply an anonymous work of early Christian an- 
tiquity, and the fact of the peculiar interpretation 
which it puts upon passages of the Old Testament 
ceases to be an important fact to the Christian inter- 
preter of the present day. Had Paul, or any other 
divinely commissioned expounder of Christianity, de- 
clared that the Old Testament required or would bear 
such interpretations as are indicated by this writer, 
such a fact, and the conclusions to which it would 
lead, would doubtless be of great curiosity and interest. 
But there is no such fact. Paul did not write the 
book. There is no evidence that the book was written 
by any other divinely commissioned teacher of our 
faith. It was the work of some good man in early 
times, much more ingenious than wise, — a friend to 
a system of Old Testament interpretation, which never 



THE EPISTLE OF JAMES. 331 

had any thing reasonable to be said in its behalf. It 
is of no authority whatever to guide or restrain us in 
our study of the Old Testament. We are to study 
the Old Testament for ourselves, altogether indepen- 
dently of any constructions put upon it by the author 
of this book, — with no more bias towards the fanciful 
and arbitrary system of allegorical interpretation than 
if this book had never been written. 

Entertaining these views of its want of authority, 
and regarding the system of allegorical interpretation, 
which it exemplifies, as altogether visionary and delu- 
sive, I am discharged from subjecting it to further 
consideration. It explains the Old Testament in a 
way inconsistent with expositions presented by me 
elsewhere ; but its explanations demand no further 
attention, when it has been shown to be itself destitute 
of authority. 



SECTION II. 

EPISTLE OF JAMES. 



This Epistle is of doubtful authenticity. I regard 
it as probably a genuine work of James, the Apostle, 
distinguished from his associate James, son of Zebedee 
(Matt. x. 2; Mark iii. 17; Luke vi. 14; Acts i. 13, 
xii. 2), by the surname of the Less. He was the 
son of Alpheus, or Cleophas (Matt. x. 3 ; Mark iii. 18 ; 
Luke vi. 15 ; Acts i. 13), and was probably the same 
who is called the " brother " of Jesus (Matt. xiii. 55 ; 
com p. Mark xv. 40 ; John xix. 25 ; Gal. i. 19), in the 
Jewish sense of being his cousin, or near kinsman. 
He appears to have had a sort of precedency in the 



332 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 8. 

church of Jerusalem (Acts xii. 17, xv. 13, xxi. 18; 
Gal. ii. 9, 12), and by some of the early writers is 
called its bishop. 

But for my present purpose it is unnecessary to go 
into the question of the authenticity of this Epistle, 
inasmuch as the few references to the Old Testament 
which it contains raise no questions of interpretation 
different from those with which we have become fa- 
miliar in our examination of the preceding books. As 
to most of those references, it will suffice merely to 
designate them. 

II. 8. 
If ye fulfil the royal law according to the Scripture, " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," ye do well. 

Comp. Lev. xix. 18. 

II. 21-26. 

Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had 
offered Isaac his son upon the altar ? Seest thou how faith 
wrought with his works, and by works was faith made per- 
fect ? And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, " Abra- 
ham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for right- 
eousness " ; and he was called the friend of God. See ye 
how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only? 
Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, 
when she had received the messengers, and had sent them 
out another way ? For as the body without the spirit is dead, 
so faith without works is dead also. 

Comp. Gen. xv. 6, xxii. 1-10, 17, 18; Is. xli. 8; 
also see above, pp. 239 - 241. How was " Rahab the 
harlot justified by works " 1 She was justified, ac- 
cording to the meaning of that word which I have 
explained above (pp. 228-242). It is impossible to 
imagine any other justification in the case. She was 
adopted into the Jewish nation, — into the community 
of God's chosen people. She was justified in the way 
of which we read in the history : " She dwelleth in 



V. 17, 18.] EPISTLE OF JAMES. 333 

Israel even unto this day, because she hid the messen- 
gers which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho " (Josh. vi. 
25) ; and by marriage she was further adopted into the 
Jewish family (Matt. i. 5). 

IV. 5. 

Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain, " The spirit that 
dwelleth in us lusteth to envy " ? 

We find no such sentence in " the Scripture " as 
that which is here recited. Griesbach would substitute 
a punctuation such as to make the verse read : " Do 
ye think that the Scripture speaketh in vain 1 Doth 
the spirit that dwelleth in us lust to envy ? " But such 
a use of the verb (\eyei, with a suppression of the sub- 
ject, the thing spoken), if not inadmissible, is at least 
unusual and awkward. 

IV. 6. 

He giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, " God resisteth 
the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." 

Comp. Prov. iii. 34. 

V. 11. 

Ye have heard of the patience of Job. 

See above, p. 310. 

V. 17, 18. 

Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he 
prayed earnestly that it might not rain : and it rained not on 
the earth by the space of three years and six months. And 
he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth 
brought forth her fruit. 

Comp. 1 Kings xvii. 1, xviii. 41 -45 ; where, however, 
it is not said that either the drought or the rain fol- 
lowed a prayer of Elijah. That circumstance was 
probably a traditional gloss upon 1 Kings xviii. 42. 
Comp. also above, p. 310. 



334 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE 



SECTION III. 
SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. 

This Epistle is not contained in the Syriac version, 
though, if genuine, it must have been written before 
that version was made ; and it must have been of ear- 
lier date than the Gospel of John, or Paul's Second 
Epistle to Timothy, both of which books are contained 
in that version, and the latter may be supposed to have 
come more slowly into circulation, having been ad- 
dressed to an individual, while the Second Epistle of 
Peter professes (iii. 1, comp. 1 Pet. i. 1) to have had a 
general destination. 

Origen is the earliest writer known to have men- 
tioned this Epistle. For the fact of his having done 
so, Eusebius is our authority. According to that 
writer (" Hist. Eccles.," Lib. VI. Cap. 25), Origen re- 
ferred to it in the following terms : " Peter, on whom 

the Church of Christ is built, has left one Epistle 

undisputed ; let it be granted also that he wrote a 
second, for this is doubted." Eusebius himself (Ibid., 
Lib. III. Cap. 3), after speaking of Peter's First Epis- 
tle as " an undoubted work of the Apostle," says : 
" That which is called the Second, we have been in- 
formed, has not been received into the New Testa- 
ment; nevertheless, appearing to many to be useful, 
it has been carefully studied with the other Scrip- 
tures." Jerome, though in one place (" De Vir. Illust.," 
Tom. IV. Pars. ii. p. 101, edit. Martianay) he says 
that it " is denied by many to be Peter's, because of 
the difference of style from the former Epistle," in 
another has referred to it as genuine (" Epist. ad Pau- 
lin.," Tom. IV. Pars ii. p. 574); and it has been re- 



I. 17-21.] SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER. 335 

ceived as such from the fourth century down. But 
no unanimity in this late period can compensate the 
deficiency of early testimony. 

An argument in favor of the Apostolic origin of 
this composition has been drawn from an alleged re- 
semblance of its style to that of the First Epistle. 
But this is certainly no greater than was within the 
reach of one, who, if he was not the Apostle, obviously 
designed an imitation of him. (2 Peter i. 1, 17, 18, 
iii. 1.) On the other hand, an alleged dissimilarity of 
style, both of thought and language, particularly in 
the second chapter, has been made the foundation of 
an opposite argument ; and that so early, as we have 
seen, as the time of Jerome. 

On the whole, it would appear to be quite unsafe to 
reason from this Epistle, as if it declared or intimated 
the opinions of the Apostle Peter on any subject, 
though, as the work of a Christian writer of an early 
time, it has its curiosity and interest. 

I. 17-21. 

He received from God the Father honor and glory, when there 
came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, " This 
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And this 
voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with 
him in the holy mount, and have the word of prophecy more 
sure ; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto 
a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and 
the day-star arise in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no 
prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. 
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man ; 
but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost. 

The second sentence above I conceive should be 
understood : " And this voice which came from heaven 
we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount, 
and have the word of prophecy confirmed.'" It was con- 



336 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [I. 17-21. 

firmed by its fulfilment. " The word of prophecy," in 
the present instance, was that which in early times had 
foretold the advent of a great benefactor to the world. 
(Gen. xviii. 18, xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14; Deut. 
xviii. 15.) That "word of prophecy" was fulfilled 
and " confirmed," when Jesus the Messiah appeared, 
and " when there came such a voice to him from the 
excellent glory, ' This is my beloved Son, in whom I 
am well pleased.' " Down to that time, men had been 
in error as to what they were to look for ; and, build- 
ing a fabric of their own upon the general hints 
which had been given," they had adopted the concep- 
tion of a deliverer quite different from the spiritual 
deliverer whom God had designed to send. For, as 
the writer very correctly remarks, " no prophecy of 
Scripture explains itself" conveys its own full meaning 
(iSlas eVtXuo-eo)?, — not " is of any private interpreta- 
tion " ; that is a rendering without pertinency, and, in- 
deed, without significance, except for such as suppose 
that Scriptural prophecy is to be interpreted by some 
public authority). However precise a prediction may 
be, should it even specify the height, complexion, and 
features of some future man, such is the imperfection 
of language that we never get the complete idea till 
the man appears whose correspondence with the pre- 
diction we are <fco discern. This being so, " until the 
day dawn," and discover all, we " do well " to " take 
heed " to supernatural prediction, " as unto a light that 
shineth in a dark place" and not — by indulging our im- 
aginations, as the Jews had done in filling up the out- 
line of their portraiture of the Messiah, so as to make 
all definite and full-sized — take the risk of falling 
into error like them. The arbitrary human expositions 
which had been given of prophecy were not to be re- 
garded as of authority. To expound a prediction by 



II. 4-9.] SECOND EPISTLE OF PETEE. 337 

making it more definite than the original, — by con- 
necting new ideas with it, — was the same as to make 
a new prediction, a thing not within the compass of un- 
assisted reason. " For prophecy came not in old time 
by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost." So far as God's 
holy spirit had authorized any to declare the future, 
so far had they declared it. Only so far did man's 
function respecting the future extend. To attempt 
to enlarge " by the will of man " on any revelation of 
God, or to make that specific which he had left general 
and indistinct, was to fall into just that vicious style 
of speculation, by which the Jews, misinterpreting the 
general intimations in Genesis and Deuteronomy of 
the future Messiah, had disqualified themselves for a 
ready reception of Jesus in that character. 

II. 4-9. 

If God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down 
to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be re- 
served unto judgment ; and spared not the old world, but 
saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, 
bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly ; and, 
turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, con- 
demned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample 
unto those that after should live ungodly ; and delivered just 
Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked ; (for 
that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hear- 
ing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their un- 
lawful deeds ;) the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly 
out of temptations. 

In the first of these verses, the writer has been un- 
derstood to refer to a fable in the composition called 
the Book of Enoch. (See below, p. 342.) Possibly 
he refers to some traditional gloss on that passage in 
the history, which relates that the messengers (the 
"angels," see above, p. 139) of Moses returned with a 
29 



338 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE [II. 15, 16. 

discouraging report from their exploration of Canaan 
[" kept not their first estate, but left their own habita- 
tion " (see Jude 6, and comp. Numbers xiii. 25 - 33)]. 
At all events, he refers to something nowhere found in 
the Old Testament. And he refers to it in terms pre- 
cisely equivalent to those in which, in the rest of the 
passage, he refers to certain narratives in Genesis (vii. 
17-24, xix. 4-25). The correct inference appears 
to be, that no more in the one case than in the other 
can it be maintained from his language that he ex- 
presses his belief in historical facts. 

II. 15, 16. 

They have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, follow- 
ing the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages 
of unrighteousness, but was rebuked for his iniquity : the 
dumb ass, speaking with man's voice, forbade the madness of 
the prophet. 

Another reference of the same class as those last re- 
marked upon. (See Numb. xxii. 7, 21 - 33 ; and 
comp. "Lectures," &c., Vol. I. pp. 381-384.) 

II. 22. 

It is happened unto them according to the true proverb, " The 
dog is turned to his own vomit again ; and the sow that was 
washed, to her wallowing in the mire." 

A form of language common in all times, and dis- 
tinctly illustrative of more formal verbal accommoda- 
tions. (See above, pp. 20 et seq.) 

III. 5-8. 

This they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God 
the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the 
water and in the water ; whereby the world that then was, 
being overflowed with water, perished ; but the heavens and 
the earth which are now, by his word are kept in store, 
reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition 



III. 13.] EPISTLE OF JUDE. 339 

of ungodly men. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one 
thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and 
a thousand years as one day. 

In opposition to some who maintained (comp. 4) 
that all earthly things were permanent, the writer says 
that the earth had once been destroyed by water, and 
wonld again be destroyed by fire. The latter opinion 
he certainly did not derive from Old Testament Scrip- 
ture. Whether he drew the former from that, or some 
other source, he does not say. In the last verse is a 
sort of quotation from a Psalm (xc. 4). 

III. 13. 

We, according to his promise, look for new heavens, and a 
new earth, wherein dvvelleth righteousness. 

The phraseology in which the promised blessing 
(comp. iii. 4, 9) is described, appears to be borrowed 
from the book of Isaiah (Ixv. 17, lxvi. 22). 



SECTION IV. 

EPISTLE OF JUDE. 



The Epistle of Jude bears so strong a resemblance, 
not only in topics, but in language, to the second chap- 
ter of the Second Epistle of Peter, as to suggest the 
idea of their having been but different copies of the 
same work, which, having circulated for a time without 
a fixed character as to authorship, finally took the 
names respectively of those two disciples, the one re- 
maining as a distinct piece, the other being inserted 
into the midst of a composition of different origin. 

The Epistle professes to have been written by a 



340 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE 

Jude, " the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of 
James " (1). These titles have been differently under- 
stood to indicate the Apostle Judas, otherwise called 
Lebbeus, and also surnarned Thaddeus (Matt. x. 3 ; 
Mark iii. 18; Luke vi. 16; John xiv. 22; Acts i. 13), 
or Judas, called, with James, Joses, and Simon, the 
" brother" of Jesus (Matt. xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3). 

The main defect in the historical evidence of the 
genuineness of this Epistle is its absence from the 
Syriac version. Of the three great early authorities 
on such questions, Irenseus does not appear to have 
referred to it (Lardner, " Supplement," &c., Chap. 
XXI. § 2); but Tertullian (alluding to Jude 14) 
says (" De Cult. Femin.," Lib. I. Cap. iii. p. 151, edit. 
Rigalt.), "Enoch is quoted by the Apostle Jude"; 
and Clement of Alexandria distinctly quotes from it 
two or three times (" Peed.," Lib. III. Cap. viii. ; " Stro- 
mat.," Lib. III. Cap. ii. sub Jin.), and calls it a work 
of Jude. It is repeatedly quoted by Origen, who also 
said of it (" Comment, in Mat.," p. 463, edit. Delarue), 
" Jude wrote an Epistle, of few lines indeed, but full 
of the powerful words of the heavenly grace, who at 
the beginning says, c Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ 
and brother of James.' " He however said in another 
place (ibid. p. 814), "If any one receives also the 
Epistle of Jude, let him consider what will follow 
from what is there said," &c. As late as the time 
of Eusebius, after which there could be no testimony 
to settle the question, the genuineness of the work 
was still contested. " Among the disputed books," 
says he (Lib. III. Cap. 25), " though approved by 

many, is reckoned that called the Epistle of 

Jude." 

Supposing the work to have originated in the Apos- 
tolic age, there would still remain the important ques- 



EPISTLE OE JUDE. 341 

tion respecting its authority, whether it was written 
by the Apostle Jude, which it does not declare itself 
to have been, or by one of those " brethren " of Jesus 
who had no such commission to speak in his name, 
and who, down to a late period of his ministry, at 
least, had taken no part in his work. (John vii. 5.) 
And this is a question which antiquity has not trans- 
mitted to us sufficient means for solving. 



I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew 
this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the 
land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. 

See above, p. 270. 

6,7. 

And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their 
own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains, under 
darkness, unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sod- 
om and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, 
giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange 
flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance 
of eternal fire. 

See above, p. 337. 



Michael the archangel, when, contending with the Devil, he dis- 
puted about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a 
railing accusation, but said, " The Lord rebuke thee." 

There is no more than a partial verbal similarity 
between this passage and one in the prophecy of Zech- 
ariah (iii. 1, 2). The writer is evidently referring to a 
popular legend, from which, agreeably to a well-author- 
ized practice of all times, he draws a moral. Origen 
(" De Princip.," Lib. III. Cap. 2, sub init.) refers for 
the fable to a book called the " Ascension of Moses." 



342 NOTES ON PASSAGES IN THE 

11. 

They have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the 
error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying 
of Core. 

That is, they have shown a malignity like that dis- 
played in the legendary history of Cain (Gen. iv. 8), 
and a rapacity and an intractable spirit like those of 
ancient adversaries of Moses, and rebels against Jeho- 
vah. (Numb. xvi. 32, xxii. 7.) 

14, 15. 

And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, 
saying, " Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his 
saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all 
that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds 
which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard 
speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." 

Eeferring to this text, Tertullian says, in the pas- 
sage quoted above (p. 340), that Jude quoted from the 
Book of Enoch, a book which, I suppose, no toler- 
ably informed person, whether Jew or Christian, 
of the Apostolic age, esteemed as a writing of au- 
thority. 

The material remark to w T hich the text gives rise 
relates to the manner in which the word " prophesied " 
is used, consonant to what I have argued at large to 
be a familiar and well-authorized application of such 
phraseology. (See above, pp. 28, 49.) The writer 
rebukes contemporaries of his own, and proceeds to 
say, " Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied 
of these." It is impossible to imagine him to have 
meant that the author of the words which he then 
quotes as prophesying " of these," had " these " in his 
mind when he so " prophesied." The sense of Jude 
clearly was, that the words ivere applicable to " these." 



EEVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. 343 

We cannot help admitting that such was the purport 
of the form of quotation in this place. - And if such 
an interpretation is unavoidable here, equally natural 
and equally fit is it in relation to passages involving 
forms of quotation no more expressly significant (for 
more expressly significant it is impossible that any 
form should be) of prophecy fulfilled. 



SECTION V. 

REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. 

The Apocalypse presents numerous applications 
of the imagery and language of the Old Testament, 
especially of those of the Books of Ezekiel and 
Daniel. It adopts, for instance (i. 7), from the 
prophet Zechariah (xii. 10, 12) words used by that 
writer respecting God, and applies them to Jesus. On 
the other hand (ii. 27), it adopts language commonly 
thought to relate to the Messiah in its original use 
(Ps. ii. 9), and applies them to faithful Christian men. 
The following list of passages, in some way pointing 
to the Old Testament, may deserve the reader's atten- 
tion, viz.: ii. 14 (comp. Numb. xxv. 1, 2, xxxi. 16); 
x. 9 (comp. Ezek. ii. 8 -iii. 3) ; xi. 1 (comp. Ezek. xl. - 
xliii.); xiv. 20, xix. 13-15 (comp. Is. lxiii. 1-3); 
xxi. 1 (comp. Is. lxv. 17, lxvi. 22) ; xxi. 2 (comp. Lev. 
xxvi. 11, 12; Ezek. xliii. 7); xxi. 15 (comp. Ezek. xl. 
3-5); xxii. 2 (comp. Ezek. xlvii. 12; Gen. ii. 9); 
xxii. 18 (comp. Deut. iv. 2, xii. 32). But there is no 
express quotation from the Jewish Scriptures, nor 
any reference to them of a nature to throw light 



344 NOTES ON PASSAGES, &c. 

upon the inquiry which I have been pursuing in 
the preceding pages. This being so, it would con- 
tribute nothing to the execution of my present plan, 
to discuss the question of the authenticity of the 
book. 



THE END. 



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